[Post] 'Call for Chart Keyboard Navigation Standards'

[julianna-langston]

Issue: #1589

Idea

Charts are becoming more interactive for mouse users, but there's no defined standard for what the keyboard equivalents should be. What's left is charting libraries coming up with their own interactions, and everyone's is wildly different.

Outline

• We want keyboard interactions for charts, but there's no standard
• How different libraries are solving the problem
• Questions that a standard should be able to answer

[julianna-langston]

@davatron5000 - Sorry to bother you, but is there someone I should tag to review this post? The last published post seemed to be handled by Eric W. Bailey, but it seems like he's not the appropriate person to review anymore. Do you know who is reviewing posts at this time?

[davatron5000]

Hi @julianna-langston, I've been thinking about this one. Sorry for the late reply.

I love your work on making charts auditory but I'm not so sure that A11y Project is a place for "Call to Arms" proposal-style posts. That's probably better suited for a personal blog or a standards group.

We could maybe rework your post into a "How-to" style "How-to add audio and keyboard accessibility to charts and graphs", but I'm not sure if that's what you're going for. Any interest in re-shaping it? Thoughts?

[julianna-langston]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for looking at this.

I originally had a different post proposal, Charting Library Scorecard, that I intended to cover "How To" make charts and graphs accessible for keyboard-only and screen reader users using different libraries. However, as I started to dig into the libraries' accessibility recommendations, and I saw how wildly different the approaches were, I felt like my "How To" guide was going off the rails, much like this sentence, just trying to juggle how and why everyone was so different. I wound up trying to separate the 2 posts, which is where this "Call to Arms/Standardization" post came from.

I still plan to write that How To post, but I'd like to have this one as background information on why the approaches are so different.

If you'd prefer the post to be re-focused, perhaps to outline the different approaches that different tools have taken for keyboard accessibility, I can do that. However, I think the "Call to Arms" structure gives the post a narrative momentum. I also feel that discussions of the spec can be a 2-way street. The A11yProject has dozens of posts around what the spec does and how to use it; it feels appropriate to me to have a post to ask what the spec should do, or otherwise identify gaps/needs that the spec doesn't provide.

If you're still not convinced, I understand, and I can rewrite it. Let me know! And thanks again for looking at this.