How Do Low-Vision Individuals Experience Information Visualization?

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in enhancing the accessibility of visualizations for people with visual impairments. While much of the research has focused on improving accessibility for screen reader users, the specific needs of people with remaining vision (i.e., low-vision individuals) have been largely unaddressed.

To bridge this gap, we conducted a qualitative study that provides insights into how low-vision individuals experience visualizations. We found that participants utilized various strategies to examine visualizations using the screen magnifiers and also observed that the default zoom level participants use for general purposes may not be optimal for reading visualizations. We identified that participants relied on their prior knowledge and memory to minimize the traversing cost when examining visualization. Based on the findings, we motivate a personalized tool to accommodate varying visual conditions of low-vision individuals and derive the design goals and features of the tool.