QUARTZ: Qualitative Understanding via Accessible Representation and Visualization

Abstract

Qualitative data visualizations -- concept maps, network graphs, Sankey diagrams, and coding stripes -- are integral to research practice, yet remain entirely inaccessible to blind and low-vision (BLV) researchers. While visualization has seen advanced multimodal solutions for quantitative charts, qualitative visualizations, and their non-linear, semantically rich structures have received no attention. We present QUARTZ, a web-based system that provides screen-reader-accessible, multimodal representations of qualitative data visualizations. Using the Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation (RITE) method, we conducted a user study with 8 BLV participants who completed 12 tasks across four visualization types. Our findings expose accessibility barriers unique to qualitative visualizations -- non-linear navigation breakdowns and semantic comprehension gaps absent from quantitative chart research---and document how iterative co-design with BLV users resolved them. We contribute empirical evidence and design guidelines for an underexplored visualization domain, advancing the infrastructure BLV researchers need to participate independently in qualitative inquiry.