Unblind the charts: Towards Making Interactive Charts Accessible in Android Applications

TL;DR

This paper addresses the inaccessibility of charts for visually impaired Android users, proposing CAM, a module that simplifies and improves the implementation of accessible charts in apps, backed by empirical user study results.

Contribution

The paper introduces CAM, a novel module that automates chart accessibility, reducing developer effort and knowledge barriers in Android applications.

Findings

Over 88% of real-world Android charts are inaccessible to visually impaired users.

CAM significantly reduces implementation difficulty for developers.

User study shows CAM improves accessibility implementation efficiency.

Abstract

Smartphones are a crucial aspect of routine life in the modern world, and viewing information graphics such as charts becomes common practice for many unassuming tasks. However, for the vision impaired, accessing graphical material presents many difficulties. Android smartphones usually come preinstalled with Google Talkback as a default screen-reader, which attempts to cater for the visually impaired by providing supplementary auditory information when interfacing with supported applications. Still, the crux of this situation is that screen-readers rely on developers correctly implementing the required accessibility guidelines for UI elements, such as charts. Unfortunately, according to the empirical study, more than 88% of the charts found in real-world Android applications are inaccessible to a vision-impaired user, contributing to the wider accessibility issues faced by vision impaired users of smartphones. These accessibility issues can be attributed to a knowledge gap in considering possible disabilities for users, and time costs for developers. To overcome these challenges, this study proposes CAM (Chart Accessibility Module), which aims to reduce time and bridge the knowledge gap required to implement chart accessibility. CAM has two steps, generating chart summary using raw data and feeding it to the screen-reader using the Android Accessibility API for MPAndroidChart library. The user study results show that CAM significantly reduces difficulty and time taken to implement accessibility for application developers.