EvoGraphs plug-in -- a relevant practical implementation

Hello all,

There was a very interesting presentation at the Graphical Web conference
today from Ather Sharif at evoXLabs, Saint Joseph's University.

He has been working on scripting tools to create screen-reader friendly
basic data visualizations.  The product, evoGraphs, currently has two main
features:

   - It generates basic SVG bar charts or pie charts, using an interface
   similar to the Google Charts API.  However, the SVG that results is
   structured much better than Google Charts' output for alternative text.
   The alt text includes basic full-sentence descriptions and annotations of
   the data highlighting features such as max/min values, or overall summary
   statistics.

   - It can process an existing SVG chart, identifying grouped labels and
   title/desc elements, and reformat it to the screen-reader-friendly
   structure based on as much data as it can infer from the existing markup.

In other words, it overlaps quite a bit on the work we have been doing or
discussing.  I encourage you all to take a look at the choices they have
made.  It currently only applies to very simple visualization structures,
but it covers many of the issues about to what degree can software
automatically convert data into textual descriptions.  Importantly,
evoXLabs has actually been doing some user testing on their projects, which
is something we haven't had much of a chance to do with the task force yet!

The main project link:  http://www.evoxlabs.org/whitecane/evographs

And yes, Doug did hint that perhaps Ather may want to get involved in the
Task Force in some way, so maybe we can hope for more feedback on *our*
work based on his team's experience.

Best,

Amelia