How can you use data visualization to make data accessible for senior stakeholders with disabilities?

2 Choose appropriate formats

Depending on your audience's abilities and preferences, you may need to choose different formats or modalities to present your data visualization. For example, if some of your senior stakeholders have low vision or color blindness, you may want to use high-contrast colors, large fonts, clear labels, and simple shapes to make your charts or graphs more visible and legible. If some of your senior stakeholders have hearing impairments, you may want to provide captions, transcripts, or sign language interpretation for any audio or video elements. If some of your senior stakeholders have cognitive or learning disabilities, you may want to use plain language, avoid jargon, and provide explanations or summaries for any complex or technical data.

3 Follow accessibility standards

To ensure that your data visualization is accessible for senior stakeholders with disabilities, you should adhere to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). These guidelines provide criteria and techniques for making web content more accessible for people with various disabilities. For example, alternative text or descriptions should be provided for any non-text content, such as images, charts, or graphs, that convey meaningful information or data. Additionally, multiple ways to access and navigate your data visualization should be provided, such as keyboard shortcuts, menus, buttons, or links. It's also important to offer options to customize or adjust your data visualization, such as changing the color scheme, font size, or zoom level. Finally, sufficient contrast, spacing, and alignment should be provided for your data visualization elements to make them more readable and understandable.

4 Tell a compelling story

Data visualization is not just about presenting data, but also about persuading senior stakeholders through storytelling. To do this, you must define a clear purpose and message for the visualization, select and organize impactful data points, add context and interpretation, and use emotional and visual cues. These techniques will help your audience to understand and appreciate your data, as well as evoke their emotions and attention.

5 Test and iterate

Finally, you need to test and iterate your data visualization to ensure it is accessible, effective, and respectful for your senior stakeholders with disabilities. You can achieve this by seeking feedback from your audience or from accessibility experts, using accessibility tools or checkers, such as WAVE or AXE, and conducting usability tests or evaluations. This will help you identify and fix any accessibility issues or errors in your data visualization, as well as observe how your audience interacts with it and measure how well it meets your objectives and expectations.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?