[BlindMath] Presenting charts and data online

[Robin Williams]

Hi all, and with apologies for the cross-posting ...

I have been growing increasingly frustrated by the amount of information that is hidden from us in charts and graphics on popular public websites, such as the BBC. Take for example this BBC News summary of the IPCC climate change report published today:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58130705
There are a couple of very lazy uses of alt text here, an infographic labelled 'infographic' and a chart labelled 'chart'. The BBC have been criminal with such lazy uses of alt text, particularly during the pandemic, during which the importance of data and charts in the public discourse has arguably never been more important. I'm going to contact the BBC and encourage them to try harder, but wondered in what forms people would like to see data presented. For me, for a simple scatter diagram, a short description in the alt text will usually suffice. I'm less sure about infographics though. And what about more complicated representations of data? I recall some cool work done by Jonathan G and a collaborator a while ago which provided access to histograms in a convenient online format, and there are also tools such as the SAS Graphics Accelerator. Would people like to see access to those types of tools used more widely in the public domain? I for one would.

Any thoughts appreciated.

Bests,
Robin