Post

Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁
@frank.computer

Big announcement: The final project of my thesis work, Skeleton: Visual Authoring of Non-visual Data Experiences, has now been accepted for publication at IEEE VIS! 🎉 🎉 🎉

frank.computerAnnouncing: Skeleton 🩻, the culminating project of my PhD!My final research project looked at the barriers that sighted practitioners face when authoring non-visual data experiences. We co-designed, built tooling, built a UI prototype, and ran a study.

9 reposts58 likes

Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁
@frank.computer

In short, we decided to explore a rather spicy conjecture: what if *sighted* people face barriers when trying to author non-visual experiences? What if non-visual accessibility work itself could be made more accessible?

Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁
@frank.computer

It might seem obvious once you understand the problem, but when sighted people design non-visual user experiences (text, tactiles, sonification, navigation), they often first use visual symbols, metaphors, and language. Their "first language" is visual, so to speak. But what happens after design?

Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁
@frank.computer

When it comes to navigation experiences specifically, suddenly the traversal paths, navigation nodes, relationships, rules, and logic of navigation become invisible. Design starts visual, but development and testing remain non-visual.