Science and Engineering in Government Conference
Alice Hannah
Data Innovation Team, Scottish Government
12 November 2024
Examples of charts and common accessibility issues
How to use colour
How to provide alternative text
An overview of available guidance
In the Teams chat: What could be improved?
Cluttered; lots of grid lines, lots of colours, lots of data
Poor colour contrast with background and with other colours
Text is quite small and difficult to read at an angle
Scottish Government Design System colour palettes for data visualisations
Example of palette for categorical data:
Colour name | Hex code | Example of colour |
---|---|---|
dark-blue | #002d54 | |
teal | #2b9c93 | |
purple | #6a2063 | |
orange | #e5682a |
In the Teams chat: What could be improved?
No way to link data lines to legend without colour
Meaningless axis label
No title, subtitle or source
However, it can also be:
a text description in the main body of the page
a table of the data presented in the chart
The life expectancy for both the United Kingdom and China have increased between 1952 and 2007. The United Kingdom has consistently had a higher life expectancy than China throughout this period.
Year | Life Expectancy | |
---|---|---|
China | United Kingdom | |
1952 | 44.0 | 69.2 |
1957 | 50.5 | 70.4 |
1962 | 44.5 | 70.8 |
1967 | 58.4 | 71.4 |
1972 | 63.1 | 72.0 |
Viva Engage communities (internal only)