RE: Accessible map with polygons

The polygon is drawn around a point on the map … does that point have a name, address, or something to identify it?

 

If the objective is to communicate that the time to travel from your current location to bus stop 23 is 5 minutes and the time to get to bus stop 18 is 10 minutes, why not label the polygons with both the time and the point of interest? Then, each element will accomplish its objective for screen reader users without the need to reference the key.

 

Natt

 

From: Michiel Bijl [mailto:michiel.list@moiety.me] 
Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2017 10:41 PM
To: W3C WAI ig <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Subject: Accessible map with polygons

 

Dear colleagues and friends,

 

There’s a project at work where we want to show the distance someone can travel within a given time from their current location. We want to do this by drawing polygons around a specific point on the map. These polygons would vary in colour & pattern and we’d have a legend next to the map that would indicate what all the different colours/patterns mean.

 

We can tick off colourblindness because we have the patterns, we can even make the legend accessible if we include colour/pattern combinations in text. However, I’m unsure how to make the rest of this map accessible. We can give the polygons an aria-label, something like “5 minutes” and “15 minutes”, but that’s not gonna do any good as you’d still have no idea what is within that polygon if you can’t see the darn thing.

 

Does anyone have experience with this or any ideas on how to solve this?

 

Talk soon.
— Michiel