Bridging Design and Accessibility: Creating FAIR and Inclusive Visualizations

This interactive workshop is aimed at making visualizations more appealing, accessible, and FAIR. Participants will explore strategies to determine the accessibility of a graph, learn tips for creating accessible graphs, and create their own visualizations with various tools. Beginning with the theory of design then diving into individual elements with hands-on exercises, participants will experience the full data visualization cycle and practice creating accessible graphs using software such as Excel, Tableau, RStudio, and Jupyter Notebooks. While all of these software are open-source and/or freely available (except Excel which is fairly ubiquitous), they differ significantly in how they visualize graphs, requiring distinct approaches towards accessibility. In addition, participants will learn how to create accessible tables and documentation to ensure a fully FAIR package that can be understood and further built upon by the public.

As data sharing becomes increasingly prevalent, it is imperative that data professionals become knowledgeable on how visualizations can be shared in a way that is FAIR, but also accessible to individuals with disabilities. Raw data and code receive the most attention when it comes to ensuring research is FAIR, but visualizations should also receive the same treatment. While data and code increase the reproducibility of research, it is the visualizations that make it understandable to the general public. This workshop will help bridge this gap and encourage data professionals to expand the range of research outputs they assist researchers in producing.