<p><b><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sukriti-chadha/">Sukriti Chadha</a>, Senior Product Manager, Verizon Media</b><br/></p><p><b></b></p><p>Finance charts quickly render hundreds of data points making it seamless to analyze a stock’s performance. Charts are great for people who can see well. Those who are visually impaired often use screen readers. For them, the readers announce the data points in a table format. Beyond a few data points, it becomes difficult for users to create a mental image of the chart’s trend. The <a href="https://github.com/yahoo/SongbirdCharts">audio charts project</a> started with the goal of making Yahoo Finance charts accessible to users with visual impairment. With audio charts, data points are converted to tones with haptic feedback and are easily available through mobile devices where users can switch between tones and spoken feedback.<br/></p><p><b></b></p><p>The idea for the accessible charts solution was first discussed during a conversation between <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sukriti-chadha">Sukriti Chadha</a>, from the Yahoo Finance team, and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbqueru">Jean-Baptiste Queru</a>, a mobile architect. After building an initial prototype, they worked with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeshebanek">Mike Shebanek</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/darren-burton-315b9593">Darren Burton</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-moulton-01a97258">Gary Moulton</a> from the <a href="https://www.verizonmedia.com/accessibility">Accessibility team</a> to run user studies and make improvements based on feedback. The most important lesson learned through research and development was that users want a nuanced, customizable solution that works for them in their unique context, for the given product.</p><p><b></b></p><p>Accessible charts were <a href="https://coolblindtech.com/yahoo-finance-app-makes-charts-accessible-to-blind-and-partially-sighted-users/">launched</a> on the production versions of the Yahoo Finance Android and iOS apps in 2019 and have since seen positive reception from screen reader users. The open source effort was led by <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/yatin-kaushal-9b4246b4">Yatin Kaushal</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/joao-birk-9b31535">Joao Birk</a> on engineering, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kisiahtimmonsmba">Kisiah Timmons</a> on the Verizon Media accessibility team, and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sukriti-chadha">Sukriti Chadha</a> on product.</p><p>We would love for other mobile app developers to have this solution, adapt to their users&rsquo; needs and build products that go from accessible to truly usable. We also envision applications of this approach in voice interfaces and contextual vision limitation scenarios. Open sourcing this version of the solution marks an important first step in this initiative.<br/></p><p>To integrate the SDK, simply clone or fork the repository. The UI components and audio conversion modules can be used separately and modified for individual use cases. Please refer to detailed instructions on integration in the <a href="https://github.com/yahoo/SongbirdCharts/blob/songbird/README.md">README</a>. This library is the Android version of the solution, which can be replicated on iOS with similar logic. While this implementation is intended to serve as reference for other apps, we will review requests and comments on the repository.<br/></p><p><b></b></p><p>We are so excited to make this available to the larger developer community and can&rsquo;t wait to see how other applications take the idea forward! Please reach out to <a href="mailto:finance-android-dev@verizonmedia.com">finance-android-dev@verizonmedia.com</a> for questions and requests. </p><figure data-orig-width="1440" data-orig-height="2960" class="tmblr-full"><img src="https://66.media.tumblr.com/5deca60ac4d2b691a0a1e7baad03df36/628d571d3857d826-7f/s540x810/75d6f6b186404441bc1e783a7817387ade7ca68d.png" alt="image" data-orig-width="1440" data-orig-height="2960"/></figure><figure data-orig-width="1440" data-orig-height="2960" class="tmblr-full"><img src="https://66.media.tumblr.com/6423f766ee1f3efe4b2de753813bce52/628d571d3857d826-c6/s540x810/8dec69fa3963494456fffb734e0f853c14ed4bf3.png" alt="image" data-orig-width="1440" data-orig-height="2960"/></figure><figure data-orig-width="1440" data-orig-height="2960" class="tmblr-full"><img src="https://66.media.tumblr.com/8b2e324b99028ca79ad723d882371cbf/628d571d3857d826-09/s540x810/4c61f5fe7035d70c98e12d29e767ddbd7f1ee139.png" alt="image" data-orig-width="1440" data-orig-height="2960"/></figure><figure data-orig-width="1440" data-orig-height="2960" class="tmblr-full"><img src="https://66.media.tumblr.com/bc2222d7e2037b71c4061d600bd8b9cc/628d571d3857d826-10/s540x810/58c258890158abc6eb7a675ddfab69e96f51ef60.png" alt="image" data-orig-width="1440" data-orig-height="2960"/></figure>