Scots with vision disabilities can now learn about the latest data on COVID outbreaks near their home, thanks to an accessible website.
Scottish Tech Army (STA) volunteers have released a new website to make Covid-19 data accessible to people with vision disabilities.
The website plays musical notes to create sonic graphs of Covid-19 cases that allow people who are blind or have low vision to track infection rates and fatalities, using the latest official data for the health department and local councils.
The sonification technique is a new element in the publicly accessible dashboard presenting Scotland’s most current Covid-19 data. These notes create auditory graphs that will help convey current Covid-19 data to users with vision disabilities.
“Most scientific data sets are communicated with the support of visual representations such as graphs. This poses significant problems for many people who cannot easily read data in this format”, said Eirini Kominou, an STA volunteer.
“Sonification has seen some early use in astronomy and geoscience fields to present and analyse complex data sets. However, using it in the dashboard will bring the technique to the wider public for the first time.
“We hope the dashboard will be widely used in Scotland to help individuals to interpret the wealth of statistics and data currently circulating more easily. Due to its regional focus and up-to-date data, we believe this tool will allow individuals to make informed decisions based on their local area’s specific situation.”
The process was also designed to support less experienced volunteers’ professional development, which, co-founder Alistair Forbes explains, is a founding principal of the STA.
“When we set up the Scottish Tech Army at the beginning of lockdown, it was to mobilise the exceptional talent within our technology sector to tackle emerging issues related to Covid-19,” Alistair said.
The Scottish Tech Army (STA) was founded by entrepreneurs Alistair Forbes and Peter Jaco in the early stages of lockdown. It connects Scotland’s tech professionals pool with projects that harness digital innovation to create solutions to the wide-ranging challenges posed by COVID-19 and support the recovery and rebuild process from the pandemic’s effects.
