Online data visualizations are used widely by content creators to communicate information, enabling users to obtain summaries, recognize patterns, and explore oddities in data that may be challenging to determine from a data table. However, the defining visual nature of data visualizations makes these visualizations inaccessible to screen-reader users, significantly disenfranchising them from accessing online information (e.g., COVID-19 data). This workshop will facilitate an understanding of the challenges screen-reader users face with online data visualizations, identify ways to make online data visualizations accessible and understand the pros and cons of each, and share possible nuances and future avenues of thinking accessibility outside of the standard solutions.

The Open Scholarship Commons (OSC) Community Fellows Workshop Series is a paid fellowship opportunity for graduate students underrepresented in the field of open scholarship. The goal of this Fellowship is to lift up students as experts in this field and create opportunities for peer to peer learning by offering student-led workshops.

Equity is a core value of the UW Libraries Open Scholarship Commons, and this Fellowship, funded by the UW Diversity Council Diversity Seed Grant and the eScience Institute, aims to support the expertise and leadership of underrepresented students in the field of open scholarship. The Fellowship program is co-administered by the Libraries Open Scholarship Commons and the eScience Institute.