ChartMaster
Hong Zou, Jutta Treviranus · 2015
Stock market charts guide investors in making financial decisions. Online stock market charts are largely interactive, driven by real-time financial data. However, these are not easily accessible via a screen reader. To enable screen reader users to query and effectively use interactive online stock market charts, we are developing a tool called ChartMaster. In this paper, we describe an early study conducted with sixteen visually impaired persons, most of whom were financial novices, for co-designing the interaction interface for C hartMaster. An inclusive design exercise was undertaken to discover alternative interfaces using non-visual modalities to interact with stock market charts. A user-centered process of co-design using HCI methods was carried out to iteratively evaluate and refine three input solutions: audio input, text input and dropdown menu. While the users ultimately declared the dropdown menu to be the most useful of the three solutions, they wanted all possible options to choose from based on task contexts and personal preferences. User feedback confirmed that a one-size-fits-all design is not ideal for accommodating diverse user needs within the widest possible range of contexts. It was also found that the ChartMaster tool with dropdown menu interface holds potential educational value for financial novices.