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data-navigator.html
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---
layout: data-navigator
permalink: /data-navigator/
title: Data Navigator
---
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en-US" xml:lang="en-US">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8" />
<meta name="generator" content="pandoc" />
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes" />
<meta name="application-name" content="Data Navigator" />
<meta name="theme-color" content="#1E3369" />
<meta property="og:image" content="http://www.frank.computer/images/projects/data-navigator.png" />
<title>Data Navigator</title>
<meta name="author" content="Frank Elavsky, Lucas Nadolskis, and Dominik Moritz" />
<meta property="og:title" content="Data Navigator: An Accessibility-Centered Data Navigation Toolkit" />
<meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" />
<meta
name="description"
content="Data Navigator is a system for creating accessible data structures that can be navigated with a variety of assistive technologies."
/>
<meta
property="og:description"
content="Data Navigator is a system for creating accessible data structures that can be navigated with a variety of assistive technologies."
/>
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Data Navigator" />
<meta property="og:type" content="website" />
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary" />
<meta property="twitter:title" content="Data Navigator: An Accessibility-Centered Data Navigation Toolkit" />
<meta name="twitter:site" content="@frankelavsky" />
<style>
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line-height: 1.5;
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font-size: 20px;
color: #1a1a1a;
background-color: #fdfdfd;
}
body {
margin: 0 auto;
max-width: 36em;
padding-left: 50px;
padding-right: 50px;
padding-top: 50px;
padding-bottom: 50px;
hyphens: auto;
overflow-wrap: break-word;
text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;
font-kerning: normal;
}
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body {
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padding: 1em;
}
h1 {
font-size: 1.8em;
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color: black;
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table caption {
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display: block;
text-align: center;
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</style>
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<script src="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/html5shiv/3.7.3/html5shiv-printshiv.min.js"></script>
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<style>
html {
line-height: 1.5;
font-family: Georgia, serif;
font-size: 20px;
color: #1a1a1a;
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body {
margin: 0 auto;
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padding-left: 50px;
padding-right: 50px;
padding-top: 50px;
padding-bottom: 50px;
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tbody {
margin-top: 0.5em;
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th {
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td {
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header {
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#TOC ul {
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#TOC > ul {
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text-decoration: none;
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code {
white-space: pre-wrap;
}
span.smallcaps {
font-variant: small-caps;
}
span.underline {
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}
div.column {
display: inline-block;
vertical-align: top;
width: 50%;
}
div.hanging-indent {
margin-left: 1.5em;
text-indent: -1.5em;
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ul.task-list {
list-style: none;
}
.display.math {
display: block;
text-align: center;
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}
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margin-left: 2em;
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float: left;
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margin-left: 2em;
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div.csl-indent {
margin-left: 2em;
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--brand-light: #6780c0;
--link-hover: #008463;
--link-color: #174b3f;
}
html {
background-color: white;
}
body {
max-width: 60em;
}
body,
p,
caption,
figcaption,
span,
div {
color: var(--text-color);
}
h1,
h2,
h3 {
color: var(--brand-color);
}
header {
font-size: 0.8em;
text-align: left;
}
nav h1 {
font-size: 1.25em;
}
header ol {
list-style-type: none;
padding-inline-start: 1em;
margin-top: 0;
}
a {
text-decoration-skip-ink: auto;
}
nav a {
text-decoration: none;
}
nav a:hover,
nav a:focus {
text-decoration: underline;
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a:visited {
color: inherit;
}
.main-wrapper a {
color: var(--link-color);
text-decoration-color: var(--link-color);
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.main-wrapper a:hover,
.main-wrapper a:focus {
color: var(--link-hover);
text-decoration-color: var(--link-hover);
transition: color 0.15s ease-in-out, text-decoration-color 0.15s ease-in-out;
}
.title,
.author {
text-align: center;
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th {
border-top: none;
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tbody th {
font-weight: 400;
}
.main-wrapper li p {
margin: 0;
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nav > ol > li > a {
padding-right: 2em;
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details {
position: relative;
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details:not([open]) {
text-align: right;
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summary {
cursor: pointer;
list-style: none;
display: flex;
position: absolute;
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right: 0em;
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display: none;
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summary:after {
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border-radius: 50%;
content: '+';
outline: var(--text-color) solid 1px;
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height: 1.5em;
margin: auto 0.1em 0px auto;
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summary a {
padding-right: 0.3em;
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details[open] summary:after {
content: '-';
font-weight: 600;
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line-height: 1.5em;
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summary:hover::after,
summary:focus::after {
outline: var(--text-color) solid 2px;
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#fn1 {
list-style-type: '†';
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header {
max-width: 280px;
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display: block;
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@media screen and (min-width: 48em) {
* {
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box-sizing: border-box;
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float: left;
max-width: 75%;
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main,
footer {
margin: 0em 0em 0em 2em;
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div.abstract {
margin: 2em 2em 2em 2em;
text-align: left;
font-size: 85%;
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div.abstract-title {
font-weight: bold;
text-align: center;
padding: 0;
margin-bottom: 0.5em;
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header {
top: 1.4em;
float: left;
max-width: 25%;
border-right: 1px solid #949494;
position: sticky;
align-self: start;
max-height: 85vh;
overflow-y: auto;
}
header ol,
header a,
header details,
header summary {
color: var(--light-text-color);
transition: all 50ms ease-in-out; /* 💡 This small transition makes setting of the active state smooth */
}
header a:hover,
header a:focus,
summary:hover,
summary:focus,
details[open] summary {
color: var(--med-text-color);
}
header li li:not(.active),
header li:not(.active) summary {
border-right: 0.25em solid transparent;
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header li li.active,
header li.active summary {
border-right: 0.25em solid var(--brand-light);
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header li li li:not(.active) {
border-right: 0.25em solid white;
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li li ol {
position: relative;
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li li li {
position: relative;
right: -0.25em;
}
header .active > a {
color: var(--text-color);
font-weight: 600;
}
body:after {
content: '.';
display: block;
height: 0;
clear: both;
visibility: hidden;
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<header>
<a href="#main" class="top-link">Skip to main content</a
><a href="https://www.frank.computer/papers/2023-vis-data-navigator.pdf" class="top-link">Download the pdf</a
><a href="https://www.frank.computer" class="top-link">Go to frank.computer</a>
<nav>
<h1>Table of Contents</h1>
<ol>
<li>
<a href="#">Data Navigator</a>
<ol>
<li>📊 <a href="#Figure1">Figure 1</a></li>
</ol>
</li>
<li>1. <a href="#introduction">Introduction</a></li>
<li>
2. <a href="#related-work">Related Work</a>
<details>
<summary aria-label="More sections"></summary>
<ol>
<li>
2.1.
<a href="#accessibility-research-and-standards-in-visualization"
>Accessibility research and standards in visualization</a
>
</li>
<li>
2.2.
<a href="#visualization-toolkits-and-technical-work">Visualization toolkits and technical work</a>
<ol>
<li>📊 <a href="#Figure2">Figure 2</a></li>
</ol>
</li>
<li>
2.3.
<a href="#considering-assistive-technologies-and-input-devices"
>Considering assistive technologies and input devices</a
>
</li>
</ol>
</details>
</li>
<li>
3. <a href="#system-design">System Design</a>
<details>
<summary aria-label="More sections"></summary>
<ol>
<li>
3.1. <a href="#structure">Structure</a>
<ol>
<li>📊 <a href="#Figure3">Figure 3</a></li>
<li>📊 <a href="#Figure4">Figure 4</a></li>
<li>📊 <a href="#Figure5">Figure 5</a></li>
</ol>
</li>
<li>
3.2. <a href="#input">Input</a>
<ol>
<li>📊 <a href="#Figure6">Figure 6</a></li>
</ol>
</li>
<li>
3.3. <a href="#rendering">Rendering</a>
<ol>
<li>📊 <a href="#Figure7">Figure 7</a></li>
<li>📊 <a href="#Figure8">Figure 8</a></li>
</ol>
</li>
</ol>
</details>
</li>
<li>
4. <a href="#case-examples">Case Examples</a>
<details>
<summary aria-label="More sections"></summary>
<ol>
<li>
4.1. <a href="#section:raster">Augmenting a Static, Raster Visualization</a>
<ol>
<li>📊 <a href="#Figure9">Figure 9</a></li>
</ol>
</li>
<li>
4.2. <a href="#section:ecosystem">Building Data Navigation for a Toolkit Ecosystem</a>
<ol>
<li>📊 <a href="#Figure10">Figure 10</a></li>
</ol>
</li>
<li>
4.3. <a href="#section:codesign">Co-designing Novel Data Navigation Prototypes</a>
<ol>
<li>📊 <a href="#Figure11">Figure 11</a></li>
<li>📊 <a href="#Figure12">Figure 12</a></li>
<li>📊 <a href="#Figure13">Figure 13</a></li>
</ol>
</li>
</ol>
</details>
</li>
<li>5. <a href="#limitations-and-future-work">Limitations and Future Work</a></li>
<li>6. <a href="#conclusion">Conclusion</a></li>
<li>7. <a href="#references">References</a></li>
</ol>
</nav>
</header>
<div class="main-wrapper">
<main id="main">
<div class="section" id="">
<h1 class="title">Data Navigator: An Accessibility-Centered Data Navigation Toolkit</h1>
<p class="author">
<a href="https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6849-5893">Frank Elavsky</a>, Lucas Nadolskis,
<a href="https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3110-1053">Dominik Moritz</a>
</p>
<div class="section" id="Figure1">
<figure>
<img
src="../images/figures/data-navigator/data_navigator.png"
alt="A diagram that shows an image of rich, accessible, navigation structures, icons for robust input handling, and additional graphics for flexible, semantic rendering. These images, icons, and graphics all feed into Data Navigator, which feeds into visualization toolkits, shown with a variety of different data visualization types (maps, scatterplots, lines, graphs, and bar charts)."
/>
<figcaption>
Figure 1: Data Navigator provides data visualization libraries and toolkits with accessible data
navigation structures, robust input handling, and flexible semantic rendering capabilities.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<div class="abstract">
<div class="abstract-title">Abstract</div>
<p>
Making data visualizations accessible for people with disabilities remains a significant challenge in
current practitioner efforts. Existing visualizations often lack an underlying navigable structure, fail
to engage necessary input modalities, and rely heavily on visual-only rendering practices. These
limitations exclude people with disabilities, especially users of assistive technologies. To address
these challenges, we present Data Navigator: a system built on a dynamic graph structure, enabling
developers to construct navigable lists, trees, graphs, and flows as well as spatial, diagrammatic, and
geographic relations. Data Navigator supports a wide range of input modalities: screen reader, keyboard,
speech, gesture detection, and even fabricated assistive devices. We present 3 case examples with Data
Navigator, demonstrating we can provide accessible navigation structures on top of raster images,
integrate with existing toolkits at scale, and rapidly develop novel prototypes. Data Navigator is a
step towards making accessible data visualizations easier to design and implement.
</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="introduction">
<h1>Introduction</h1>
<p>
While there is a growing interest in making data visualizations more accessible for people with
disabilities, current toolkit and practitioner efforts have not risen to the challenge at scale. Major data
visualization tools and ecosystems predominantly produce inaccessible artifacts for many users with
disabilities. We believe this is largely a gap caused by a lack of underlying structure in most
visualizations, failure to engage the input modalities used by people with disabilities, and over-reliance
on visual-only rendering practices.
</p>
<p>
Users who are blind or low vision commonly use screen readers and users with motor and dexterity
disabilities often do not use "pointer" (precise mouse and touch) based input technology when interacting
with digital interfaces. Many users with motor and dexterity disabilities use discrete navigation controls,
either sequentially using keyboard-like input, or directly using voice or text commands.
</p>
<p>
Most interactive visualizations simply focus on pointer-based input: they can be clicked or tapped, hovered,
and selected in order to perform analytical tasks. This excludes non-pointer input technologies. These
devices require consideration for the navigation structure and underlying semantics of a visual interface.
</p>
<p>
However, building navigable spatial and relational interfaces is a difficult task with current resources.
</p>
<p>
Raster images, arguably the most common format for creating and disseminating data visualizations, currently
cannot be made into navigable structures. These are only described using alt text, which limits their
usefulness to screen reader users.
</p>
<p>
Unfortunately, more accessible rendering formats like SVG with ARIA (accessible rich internet applications)
properties are more resource intensive than raster approaches, like WebGL-powered HTML canvas or
pre-rendered PNG files. SVG puts a burden on low-bandwidth users and a ceiling on how many data points can
be rendered in memory.
</p>
<p>
In addition, ARIA itself has 2 major limitations. First, when added to interface elements, ARIA only
provides <em>screen reader</em> access, which means that developers must build a solution from scratch for
other navigation input modalities. Second, ARIA’s linear navigation structure can be time-consuming for
screen reader users if a visualization has many elements. This may impede how essential insights and
relationships are understood <span
class="citation"
data-cites="Sorge2016Polyfilling Godfrey2018Accessible Zong2022Rich Thompson2023Chart Jung2022Communicating Sharif2021Understanding"
>[<a
href="#ref-Sorge2016Polyfilling"
id="Sorge2016Polyfilling01"
aria-label="37, V. Sorge"
title="37, V. Sorge"
role="doc-noteref"
>37</a
>,
<a
href="#ref-Godfrey2018Accessible"
id="Godfrey2018Accessible01"
aria-label="14, A. J. R. Godfrey"
title="14, A. J. R. Godfrey"
role="doc-noteref"
>14</a
>,
<a
href="#ref-Zong2022Rich"
id="Zong2022Rich01"
aria-label="47, J. Zong"
title="47, J. Zong"
role="doc-noteref"
>47</a
>,
<a
href="#ref-Thompson2023Chart"
id="Thompson2023Chart01"
aria-label="38, J. R. Thompson"
title="38, J. R. Thompson"
role="doc-noteref"
>38</a
>,
<a
href="#ref-Jung2022Communicating"
id="Jung2022Communicating01"
aria-label="19, C. Jung"
title="19, C. Jung"
role="doc-noteref"
>19</a
>,
<a
href="#ref-Sharif2021Understanding"
id="Sharif2021Understanding01"
aria-label="34, A. Sharif"
title="34, A. Sharif"
role="doc-noteref"
>34</a
>]</span
>.
</p>
<p>
Some emerging approaches have sought to address this serial limitation of data navigation and provide richer
experiences for screen reader users <span
class="citation"
data-cites="Sorge2016Polyfilling Godfrey2018Accessible Zong2022Rich Thompson2023Chart"
>[<a
href="#ref-Sorge2016Polyfilling"
id="Sorge2016Polyfilling11"
aria-label="37, V. Sorge"
title="37, V. Sorge"
role="doc-noteref"
>37</a
>,
<a
href="#ref-Godfrey2018Accessible"
id="Godfrey2018Accessible11"
aria-label="14, A. J. R. Godfrey"
title="14, A. J. R. Godfrey"
role="doc-noteref"
>14</a
>,
<a
href="#ref-Zong2022Rich"
id="Zong2022Rich11"
aria-label="47, J. Zong"
title="47, J. Zong"
role="doc-noteref"
>47</a
>,
<a
href="#ref-Thompson2023Chart"
id="Thompson2023Chart11"
aria-label="38, J. R. Thompson"
title="38, J. R. Thompson"
role="doc-noteref"
>38</a
>]</span
>. However, these approaches rely on a tree-based navigation structure which is often not an appropriate
choice for visualizations of relational, spatial, diagrammatic, or geographic data. Many visualization
structures are currently unaddressed.
</p>
<p>
Zong <span>et al</span> stress that in order to realize richer, more accessible data visualizations,
the responsibility must be shared by “toolkit makers,” the practitioners who design, build, and maintain
visualization authoring technologies <span class="citation" data-cites="Zong2022Rich"
>[<a
href="#ref-Zong2022Rich"
id="Zong2022Rich21"
aria-label="47, J. Zong"
title="47, J. Zong"
role="doc-noteref"
>47</a
>]</span
>. Our contribution is towards that aim, to make more accessible data experiences easier to design and
implement within existing visualization work.
</p>
<p>
We present Data Navigator. Data Navigator is a toolkit built on a graph data structure, within which a broad
array of common data structures can be expressed (including list, tree, graph, relational, spatial,
diagrammatic, and geographic structures). Data Navigator also exposes an interface that supports
interactions via screen reader, keyboard, gesture-based touch, motion gesture, voice, as well as fabricated
and DIY input modalities. Data Navigator provides expressive structure and semantic rendering capabilities
as well as the ability for developers to use their own, preferred method of rendering.
</p>
<p>
Data Navigator builds upon human-studies motivated work on accessible navigation <span
class="citation"
data-cites="Zong2022Rich Thompson2023Chart"
>[<a
href="#ref-Zong2022Rich"
id="Zong2022Rich31"
aria-label="47, J. Zong"
title="47, J. Zong"
role="doc-noteref"
>47</a
>,
<a
href="#ref-Thompson2023Chart"
id="Thompson2023Chart21"
aria-label="38, J. R. Thompson"
title="38, J. R. Thompson"
role="doc-noteref"
>38</a
>]</span
>
towards a more generalizable resource for visualization practitioners. We contribute a high-level system
design for our node-edge graph-based solution as well as an implementation of this system on the web, using
JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Through our case examples we also demonstrate that our generalized approach is
suitable for replication of existing best practices from other systems, integration into existing
visualization toolkit ecosystems, and development of novel prototypes for accessible navigation. We
illustrate how Data Navigator’s use of generic edges, dynamic navigation rules, and loose coupling between
navigation and visual encodings provides practitioners robust, expressive, control over their system
designs.
</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="related-work">
<h1>Related Work</h1>
<p>
Our contribution is an attempt to bridge the gap between research and practice more effectively across broad
ecosystems in order to enable deeper and more expressive accessible data navigation interfaces. Below we
outline the prior research and standards that inform our project, a breakdown of existing visualization
toolkit approaches to data navigation, and then accessible input device considerations.
</p>
<div class="section" id="accessibility-research-and-standards-in-visualization">
<h2>Accessibility research and standards in visualization</h2>
<p>
Research and standards are both somewhat limited by a strong bias towards visual disabilities. In
<em>Chartability</em>, 36 of the 50 criteria related to accessible visualization considerations involve
visual disabilities <span class="citation" data-cites="Elavsky2022Chartability Fan2023Accessibility"
>[<a
href="#ref-Elavsky2022Chartability"
id="Elavsky2022Chartability01"
aria-label="9, F. Elavsky"
title="9, F. Elavsky"