This week we focused on thinking about ways of seeing in two different ways. First we learned about ways of visualizing data intuitively and interactively. Secondly, we discussed accessibility, particularly as it relates to literally being able to see and/or access web avaiable content.
I started by checking out examples of different types of data visualizations on http://public.tableau.com, which is a free software platform. It was amazing to see the types of things that can be produced with ease on a web-based platform, things as diverse as snowfall extremes within the U.S. to mapping word usage by Taylor Swift in her ablums. Dr. Otis shared through her own research about “preattentive procession,” or the ability for our minds to readily process certain types of visualizations, and tips how to make our own visualizations more reader-friendly.
While it is fun to see the creative ways that we can look at data to interpret it more readily, the flip side of that coin is how do we make not just our visualizations, but our websites, online digital history work, and everything on the web accessible to all? These issues have been addressed by the American Disabilities Act – these aren’t suggestions; websites need to be accessible to people with disabilities, including visual disabilities. Readings walked us through ideas in the field of design, and how design is often an iterative process of refinement that occurs through doing. And there are simple things that can be done to address accessibility, like designing for colorblindness by avoiding color patterns that are not distinct to such viewers (see graphic above illustrating red/green colorblindness). The most profound was the web-based tool that can evaluate any website for accessibility errors. WAVE, or the Website Acessibility eValuation tool, sponsored by Utah State University, is incredibly useful in that once again it is a free online platform that will automatically check accessibility errors. Now, for someone not as technically forward as many people, the useability declined as I cannot read/write code. If I did, the information would be much more useful and easy to fix.
For the evaluation of my own website, I found I had lots of contrast errors. I ended up switching themes, because I already was averse to the visual organization of the previous theme as it was. However, while this improved the visual design to me personally, it just changed the text so there was yet again errors in the readability of the text due to low contrast. And yet, the theme I chose seemed to have no way to change the text formatting all at once. That is an issue with wordpress; each theme is different and there are so many menus I get frustrated and tend to give up. Unfortunately, in the case of accessibility, it is a good thing that plug ins help with this because otherwise my website would be doomed because of my poor abilities to manipulate web content despite good intentions!
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Terence V
October 26, 2020 — 5:33 pm
I share similar frustrations about the fine-tuning of websites, especially if the process to make the design work isn’t very intuitive. Even though I came up with the “Mypsace” wave of designing your own website, the skillset and patience associated with that design atrophied as I stopped using it and Facebook gave us all that “one-size-fit-all” design approach. Fortunately, for larger projects, dedicated specialists could be taken on board and directed to account for those accessibility requirements called for by the ADA. But our personal projects are all, by default, labors of love, and so we’ve got to learn how to make them work, one way or another. Don’t lose hope!
admin
October 27, 2020 — 8:02 pm
Yes, thank you! Patience is a virtue!
Robert Carlock
October 26, 2020 — 6:34 pm
I totally agree with the frustration/overwhelming feeling that comes with addressing accessibility with our own work, especially when dealing with WordPress. At first I was overwhelmed to realize that there were so many accessibility issues that I had just never considered, and while most only require minor tweaks to make information accessible, the sheer scope of redesigning a project or webpage is intimidating. Then, when you actually dive into using a tool like WAVE and see how many errors there are, it becomes overwhelming. Add in that most of the solutions require coding knowledge and understanding how WordPress works and all of the sudden you need two different pools of knowledge to even attempt to rectify the accessibility issues. I appreciate so much more now the work that people do to ensure that things are accessible because it is so much work.
admin
October 27, 2020 — 8:01 pm
Absolutely appreciate those who do this work!
Stephanie Grimm
October 28, 2020 — 12:28 am
For as many contributors as WordPress now has, I’m surprised that there aren’t better/more open “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” theme editors that make customization easier. Even if one understands how to work with CSS, it’s another matter to know how a theme builder defined all of the elements and styled things like menu or widget colors so you know what to override.
Also, I’m curious if you’ve found that any of your art historical training has helped with understanding visualizations — given that we spend so much time looking very deeply at visual information. (Honestly, I haven’t found it any easier — a lot of visualizations still seem incomprehensible or over-designed, but I can’t tell if it’s because it’s representing something more abstract…or if it’s just a bad visualization. 😬 )
Samantha
October 28, 2020 — 1:25 am
I agree with your point you when it comes to creating and designing visualizations. It is so tempting to make something visually pleasing to your own preferences and how you see things. As a visual artist, I love color! However, as I have worked more with digital visualizations, I have learned and know that I can’t just use whatever I believe looks good because not everyone can see it very well. It was interesting to see that WordPress templates tend to fair on the side of visually pleasing, but in the end are not that visually accessible. This week’s modules definitely make you think about how we need to be aware that just because something looks and present well to ourselves, it’s not always the case for others viewing the same thing.