An accessible interface for data mining

Dear Web Accessibility Imitative Interest Group (WAI-IG) Subscribers,

Hello, my name is Alan Bridgeman and I am a third year undergraduate computer science student at the University of Manitoba. I am a relatively new subscriber to this list and if there is anything that you think I have done wrong or want clarity about feel free to send me an email. 

So, I just finished taking a class called Introduction to Data Mining which talks about, as you can probably guess, data mining. One of the units we study in this class is Visual Analysis which is how to display complex mining results to a user in a simple and straight forward way. Having a particular interest in assistive/accessible technology I was curious if there was any pre-existing or in-development tools to make an accessible version of this sort of interface? and what some of the things that other people think should be considered or have encountered in this area? 

This query comes from a few ideas that I've had recently. One idea is for a health tracking app that would allow people living with disabilities to gage the abnormality of arising symptoms. The other is a computer security software that according to people I've talked to is sorely lacking in the accessible technology space. I haven't put a lot of effort into checking the viability of these ideas but felt that they present enough of a challenge and idea of what I'm looking to do that they are worth mentioning.

The need for tools to display large data analysis to people living with disabilities particularly those with visual disabilities and using screen readers seems a intensive and interesting challenge. You would have to have some form of text based or auditory based representation as opposed to a graphical one. This is an interesting proposition and in the increasingly "big data era" as my professor would say, is becoming, in my opinion, increasingly more important to address.

Any feedback or response on this topic would be appreciated. Thanks for your time.

Regards,
Alan BVridgeman

Received on Saturday, 16 April 2016 20:00:04 UTC