Identifying things and relationships

SVG TF,

Having raised the need to identify things and relationships on the TF call
today, thought it might help to transfer the discussion here. 

I think it would be helpful if we could establish some of the basic things
and relationships someone might want to know about SVG content -
specifically data visualisations. Chaals has put together a useful
collection of SVG charts [1], which seem like a good place to start looking
for typical things and relationships.

>From the call today, a few things were suggested...

What type of data visualisation is it? A pie chart, bar chart, scatter plot
etc.

What units are represented in the data visualisation? Temperature (degrees),
rainfall (millimetres), Dollar value etc.

How is data arranged? By product type and Dollar value, or by colour, shape
and volume for example.

What is known about the data? 10 data-points grouped into 2 data-sets for
example.

After which it's likely that someone would want to drill down for more
information. Depending on the complexity and nature of the data
visualisation, the way someone drills down it likely to change. Possible
strategies include drilling down for more information about scale/axes, or
drilling straight down into the data-points.

If we can identify the generic things and relationships in a typical data
visualisation, we can then look at how those things can best be represented
using ARIA. From there we can look at the challenges we're up against - like
managing complexity for example.


A (quite possibly stupid) idea occurred to me whilst writing this... perhaps
it would help to look at teaching materials that explain the basics of data
visualisation? It seems likely that such things would be a good source for
identifying some of the basic building blocks/concepts of data visualisation
- which is roughly what we need to do here I think.

Léonie.

[1] https://www.w3.org/wiki/SVG_Accessibility/ExampleImages


-- 
Senior accessibility engineer @PacielloGroup @LeonieWatson

Received on Friday, 14 August 2015 15:11:08 UTC