Inclusive Charts with AI Descriptions

Presented at 3:00 pm in Colorado I-J on Wednesday, November 19, 2025.

Speaker(s)

• Doug Schepers, Founder and Director, Fizz Studio

Session Details

• Length of Session: 1-hr
• Format: Lecture
• Expertise Level: Beginner
• Type of session: General Conference

Summary

Data visualizations like charts are often challenging to make accessible. We'll describe dataviz problems and solutions, and introduce ParaCharts, a new data visualization tool that makes it easy to create and publish charts on your website that are fully accessible to people with a wide variety of disabilities.

ParaCharts not only generates charts, but uses AI to produce automatic descriptions of the chart at every level of detail: the full chart, each data series, and each data point.

Abstract

Traditional approaches to accessibility in data visualization revolve around a few core techniques: alt text; long descriptions; serial access; and limited color palettes. Unfortunately, even with all of these considerations, most accessible charts fail to provide equivalent access to data for people with disabilities, and simply following WCAG will not result in an accessible chart.

This session will describe the challenges of making accessible dataviz, offer solutions to overcome these challenges, demonstrate these solutions with ParaCharts, and show how you can make your own charts more accessible and inclusive.

We'll provide a detailed exploration of dataviz accessibility principles, and share best practices, standards guidance, resources, and things to avoid. We'll cover issues with the most common chart types for various disabilities, with consideration for cognitive load, and give guidance for writing text descriptions for charts.

Our ParaCharts chart software automates most of these accessibility solutions. ParaCharts is built from the ground up with accessibility and personalization in mind, and includes many innovative approaches to address the data needs of people with blindness, low vision, color vision deficiency, and cognitive disabilities. It includes features like color customization, sonification, annotation, and tactile support. For equivalent access, it also includes a custom AI system to autogenerate interactive descriptions of the chart at every level of detail: the full chart, each data series, and each data point or feature.

For each dataviz accessibility challenge, we'll show practical, equivalent affordances. The knowledge you gain will apply to any charts, not just those made by ParaCharts. You'll know not just how, but why, to resolve each accessibility issue.

You don't need to know anything about accessibility or data visualization to make inclusive charts with ParaCharts… but this session will give you a solid grounding in both.

Keypoints

1. Most charts, even accessible ones, do not provide equivalent experiences for people with disabilities.
2. Most AI is inconsistent and not suitable for use in teaching or evaluations.
3. The right software can address issues in chart accessibility without the need for specialized expertise.

Disability Areas

Cognitive/Learning, Vision

Topic Areas

Artificial Intelligence, Assistive Technology, Uncategorized, Web/Media/App Access

Speaker Bio(s)

Doug Schepers

Doug is the founder and director of Fizz Studio, a small startup focusing on making data visualizations accessible to people with disabilities. He began this work while working as a project manager for the W3C, organizing and authoring web standards for over a decade. Since then, he's been doing consulting, software development, and research to make access to data universal. He uses his own adult-diagnosed ADHD as a tool to help synthesize ideas from across different domains, and as an intuitive gauge for cognitive load.