A Browser Extension for Providing Visually Impaired Users Access to the Content of Bar Charts on the Web

This paper presents the SIGHT (Summarizing Information GrapHics Textually) system that enables visually impaired users to gain access to information graphics that appear on a web page. The user interface is implemented as a browser extension that is launched by a keystroke combination. The output of SIGHT is a textual summary of the graphic, the core content of which is the hypothesized intended message of the graphic designer. The textual summary of the graphic is then conveyed to the user by screen reading software (such as JAWS). This approach has the benefits of 1) not requiring any action on the part of the web page developer, and 2) providing the user with the message and knowledge that one would gain from viewing the graphic rather than requiring the user to form a mental map of the graphic.