Web-based data visualizations have become very popular for exploring data and communicating insights. Newspapers, journals, and reports regularly publish visualizations to tell compelling stories with data. Unfortunately, most visualizations are inaccessible to readers with visual impairments. For many charts on the web, there are no accompanying alternative (alt) texts, and even if such texts exist they do not adequately describe important insights from charts. To address the problem, we first interviewed 15 blind users to understand their challenges and requirements for reading data visualizations. Based on the insights from these interviews, we developed SeeChart, an interactive tool that automatically deconstructs charts from web pages and then converts them to accessible visualizations for blind people by enabling them to hear the chart summary as well as to interact through data points using the keyboard. Our evaluation with 14 blind participants suggests the efficacy of SeeChart in understanding key insights from charts and fulfilling their information needs while reducing their required time and cognitive burden.

翻译：基于网页的数据可视化已成为探索数据和传达洞察的流行方式。报纸、期刊和报告经常发布可视化图表以用数据讲述引人入胜的故事。不幸的是，大多数可视化图表对视障读者而言无法访问。网页上的许多图表没有附带替代文本，即使存在此类文本，它们也无法充分描述图表中的重要洞察。为解决这一问题，我们首先访谈了15名盲人用户，以了解他们阅读数据可视化时面临的挑战和需求。基于这些访谈的洞察，我们开发了SeeChart，这是一个交互式工具，能自动解析网页中的图表，并将其转换为盲人可访问的可视化形式，使他们既能听到图表摘要，又能通过键盘与数据点交互。我们对14名盲人参与者进行的评估表明，SeeChart在帮助他们理解图表关键洞察、满足信息需求的同时，减少了所需时间和认知负担。