Accessible Data Visualization for Cerebral Visual Impairment

The Challenge

Data visualizations assume everyone sees them the same way. Cerebral/cortical visual impairment (CVI) is a neurological condition in which the connection between the eyes and the brain doesn't function properly. Vision can be inconsistent, the world may appear as blobs of color, and busy screens overwhelm. We set out to make a Spotify data visualization, the top ten most streamed artists of all time, that someone with CVI can explore freely using sound and high contrast.

Who We Designed For

Our persona, Jamie, is a freshman in high school who uses her phone, tablet and computer to access information and communicate, and listens to audiobooks and music on Spotify. She has a hard time processing visual information and seeing fine details, and involuntary eye movements (nystagmus) mean she relies on movement, color or familiar objects for recognition. Our goal: a design that lets her navigate the visualization freely using sound and high contrast.

Research Insights

People with CVI often prefer bright, high-contrast colors that stand out. That led to three rules for the visualization: use bright, high-contrast colors to highlight important areas; use a darker surface color to increase contrast; and use color-coding to improve recognition from a distance.

Sound would carry the information, so we tested it. We surveyed 20 people on seven candidate sounds, asking how clearly each indicated a change, whether it was distracting, and whether it gave a sense of moving forward or backward. Sound 2 and Sound 4 best signaled change, Sound 6 was the most distracting and the least clear, and Sound 3 was the least distracting. On volume, Sound 1 was just right, Sound 4 and Sound 2 were too loud, and Sound 3 was too subtle. By averaging the data and deliberating, we chose Sound 7.

The Tree Map

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Data Research: Top 10 Most Streamed Artists of All Time

We collected data on the decade’s top 10 most-streamed artists and their top 10 songs, then coded the data to identify patterns and organize it for our accessible treemap visualization.

The navigation rules are consistent and learnable. Tab enters the menus and genres, Enter or Return moves from a genre into its songs, and the arrow keys move within a category. Option with an arrow key skips forward or back a category, and Shift with M or L gives the overall or abbreviated stream number. An alert sound plays when you move to another genre, and a buzz plays when you try to go somewhere you can't.

The Final Design