Benthic: Designing Relational Traversal Structures to Enhance Diagram Accessibility

Abstract

Diagrams are data structures for problem-solving and communication because they allow users to formalize and analyze complex concepts through spatial relations. However, their visual nature presents significant accessibility challenges for blind and low-vision users who rely on screen readers. Existing methods for making diagrams accessible often fall short, providing only superficial overviews and lacking detailed, navigable structures. This paper introduces Benthic, a system for generating intermediate representations and depicting relational information in diagrams. Benthic provides an interface that allows screen reader users to navigate the diagram data structure. Benthic uses a hypergraph traversal structure, where diagram nodes are grouped by hyperedges that represent diagram relations. These relations are presented in the screen reader interface according to their priority (or visual salience), allowing screen reader users to traverse the information similarly to how sighted users might view the diagram. Additionally, users can explore diagrams at various levels of detail by choosing to navigate high-level relations or more detailed relations based on their needs. We evaluate Benthic’s effectiveness through three comparative case studies with existing diagram accessibility systems. Benthic aims to create a design space of traversal structures that will allow blind and low-vision users to leverage the same affordances available to sighted users, enabling intuitive interaction and comprehensive understanding of diagrams.