Developing accessible software for data visualization

An increasing number of countries are establishing regulations that require information technology to be fully accessible by all users. To make software products accessible, they must be designed and implemented so that they can also be used by persons with sensorial or physical impairments. Although checklists and coding guidelines are available, this requirement can be challenging, especially when implementing accessibility for a product that displays information in a graphical format. This paper presents a process-oriented view of addressing accessibility issues in software development. It describes what had to be taken into consideration and how accessibility issues were solved. The experience was gained during the development of the IBM DB2® Intelligent Miner™ Visualization, an application used to visualize data mining results. The following areas are addressed: integrating design for accessibility into the development process, providing special design features that enable users to interact with graphical data, and programming solutions for accessibility features.