3Q: Collaborating with users to develop accessible designs

Academic researchers and others have long struggled with making data visualizations accessible to people who are blind. One technological approach has been 3D printing tactile representations of data, in the form of raised bar graphs and line charts. But, often, the intended users have little say in the actual design process, and the end result isn’t as effective as planned.
A team of MIT researchers hopes to fix that. They used a collaborative project with staff and students at the Perkin