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Exploring them using Windows Narrator I would say not completely, because the screen reader reads a lot of unnecessary data before going through the table, but I'm new to WCAG and accessibility and I can hardly imagine something distributed by Google not being accessible...

Also, I noticed some charts not being read sometimes, like on this page: https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery/barchart

Does anybody know if they are WCAG compliant? Can you explain to me why they are or why they are not?

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  • Which compliance level (A, AA, AAA) are you targeting?
    – msanford
    Dec 4, 2017 at 16:30
  • I am current evaluating for AA level, but I was curious on compliance with any of them.
    – silviajoy
    Dec 6, 2017 at 7:17

1 Answer 1

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This is a very broad question and some aspects will be subjective, so it's difficult to give a complete answer. There are a couple of obvious problems with making charts and graphs accessible, notably the reliance on colour to to provide information and the fact that the data is represented visually.

Google has mitigated the colour coding issue somewhat by including tooltips, which appear when hovering on elements of a chart. In the example below, while it might be difficult for someone with colour blindness to differentiate and cross-reference the segments against the key, they can still hover on each segment to reveal the label and associated numbers.

enter image description here

The visual representation of data is still an issue for those using a screen reader or braille display. Fortunately, as the original question mentions, Google does output the same data in tabular format. This is hidden visually and identified by an aria-label element, which is announced by assistive technology:

aria-label="A tabular representation of the data in the chart."

I haven't tested Google Charts in any great detail, certainly not all of its methods and features, but I expect most accessibility issues have been mitigated directly or by providing an alternative WCAG conforming version of the same content.

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  • It is true that Google provides tabular alternatives (not for all type of charts though), but before reading the table, the screen reader (which I am not confident with, honestly) pass through every title of the graphic and the percentages without any apparent logic for a blind user. I think that if they have a tabular alternative they should aria hide the graphical representation, what do you think about it?
    – silviajoy
    Dec 6, 2017 at 7:23
  • Hi silviajoy, I want to use Google charts for my project but want to ensure that they are WCAG compliant. Were you able to find a solution to hiding the graphic and only reading the table out for screen-readers?
    – yeshashah
    Jan 15, 2020 at 12:27

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