Hi Ann,

You create charts in Excel and JAWS has a great tool for accessing them. See the excerpt below from my soon to be released book. The example assumes you have access to a practice file that you do not have. But just try it out with a small data range of your own with a few data labels down column A and corresponding values next to them in column B.

Regards,

David

5.9.5 Creating Charts and Reading Them with JAWS

Charts are visual presentations of data that are often more effective for communicating results than tabular presentations. They are easy to create. But you might assume that they are inaccessible to screen reader users. Fortunately, JAWS has a very nice chart reading feature to make them accessible.

Among the most commonly used chart types are:

·       Pie charts: Used to represent each data item as a percentage share of a total value. Each item is represented as a slice of the pie.

·       Column charts: Typically used to compare several items in a specific range of values, such as comparing sales volumes of several retail stores. The numerical values appear as vertical columns.

·       Bar charts: Used to display the same data as column charts, but as horizontal bars instead of vertical columns.

·       Line charts: Often used to present trends over time. Monthly stock or commodity prices are examples.

I will demonstrate by creating a pie chart showing the number and percentage shares of annual tourist visits to New England from four countries. If you are using JAWS and want to try it yourself, open the practice file entitled, “New England Tourist Visits.xlsx.”

The countries are listed in cells A2 through A5. The corresponding numbers of tourist visits are listed in cells B2 through B5. The Steps for creating the pie chart are:

1.     Select the data range containing the data, in this case A2 through B5.

2.     Press the Alt key to open the Upper ribbon. If you first land on the Home tab, Right arrow once to the Insert tab.

3.     The Charts group is fairly deep into the Lower ribbon, so press Control Right arrow several times until you land on the Charts group, the first item here being the Recommended charts button.

4.     Tab several times to the Insert pie or donut chart submenu, and press Enter.

5.     You first land on the 2D pie button. This is a two-dimensional pie chart. There are several other choices here that you can arrow through, including a 3D pie chart which adds shading to give it a three-dimensional effect. We will stick with the 2D pie chart, so press Enter on that.

6.     The chart is now visible to the right of the data.

At this point, depending on your version of JAWS, sometimes it immediately begins reading the entire chart content, other times it does not. In any event, press Escape now.

To access the chart and have it read to you, press Control Shift O which brings up a list of objects. “Objects” include charts, pictures, and illustrations. After pressing Control Shift O, you will hear something like “Chart 1, chart title E2 M17,” where cell E2 is the top left cell and M17 is the bottom right cell of the range where the chart has been inserted in the worksheet. This is the default chart title.

Press Enter on it to select it (note that you must press Enter, Spacebar will not work), and JAWS will now start reading the chart’s content to you. JAWS may read the chart continuously or just the first line. If it stops reading after the first line, you can Down arrow to read it one line at a time, or you can press Insert Down arrow to read it continuously. Here’s what you will hear for this chart: “Chart Title, Description: Pie. Displays the contribution of each value to a total., legend: Series1 has 4 slices, slice 1 CATEGORY=England, value=40000, contributes 27 percent, slice 2 CATEGORY=France, value=30000, contributes 20 percent, slice 3 CATEGORY=Italy, value=20000, contributes 13 percent, slice 4 CATEGORY=Canada, value=60000, contributes 40 percent, This sheet contains only the chart.”

You can move, copy or edit charts. Let’s say you would like to change the data range where it appears visually on your worksheet. Do the following:

1.     Press Control Shift O to access the list of objects.

2.     If the pie chart is the only object in your worksheet, you land on it. If not, Down arrow to it, and press Enter to select it.

3.     Press Control X to cut it to the Clipboard.

4.     Navigate to the cell where you want its top left corner to appear and press Control V to paste it there.

You could also copy the chart by pressing Control C instead of Control X and paste it in a Word document.

Finally, you can add chart titles, X and Y axis titles, table legends, and data legends. To do this, first select the chart by pressing Control Shift O, and Enter to select it. You can then press Alt to open the Upper ribbon, and Right arrow to the Chart Layout tab of the ribbon. Here you can Tab into the Lower ribbon to Chart title, Axis titles, Legend, or Data Labels to add or change these.