Effective Practices for Description of Science Content within Digital Talking Books
Example A: Bar Chart
Bar Chart - Vertical
Guidelines:
- Bar charts should be converted into accessible tables.
- Briefly describe the chart and give a summary if one is immediately apparent.
- Provide the title and axis labels.
- It is not necessary to describe the visual attributes of the bars, e.g. dark blue, light blue, unless there is an explicit need such as an exam question referring to the colors.
Description:
Figure 1 is a bar chart that measures percentage of vaccination coverage in five states over one year, from Q3 2006 to Q2 2007. In each state, the coverage increases over time.
The data are summarized in the following table. All data are approximate.
| Arizona | District of Columbia | Michigan | Minnesota | Montana | Oregon | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q3 2006 | 35% | 10% | 5% | 0% | 15% | 20% |
| Q4 2006 | 45% | 30% | 33% | 25% | 27% | 27% |
| Q1 2007 | 50% | 45% | 42% | 35% | 37% | 45% |
| Q2 2007 | 65% | 48% | 50% | 41% | 40% | 44% |
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Bar Chart - Horizontal
Title: How people who are deaf, hard-of-hearing, blind or have low vision are alerted to emergencies.
Guidelines:
- While most bar charts should be converted into accessible tables, this simple chart can be presented as text in a list.
- Provide the title and labels.
- It is not necessary to describe the visual attributes of the bars unless there is an explicit need.
Description:
The figure is a bar chart that has been converted into the following table. All data are approximate.
| Response | deaf/hard of hearing | blind/low vision |
|---|---|---|
| Don't Know | 70 | 79 |
| Friend | 59 | 62 |
| Family | 65 | 64 |
| Co-worker | 33 | 38 |
| TV | 102 | 65 |
| Radio | 30 | 80 |
| 36 | 5 | |
| Web | 16 | 4 |
| Landline Phone | 25 | 53 |
| Cellphone | 8 | 11 |
| Pager | 17 | 10 |
| Smartphone/PDA | 18 | 8 |
| TTY | 47 | 0 |
| Video relay service | 4 | 0 |
| Phone relay service | 8 | 0 |
| Other | 7 | 9 |
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Funding for this project is provided by the National Science Foundation.
