**1. Introduction**

Lack of access to graphical information represents one of the most pervasive information access challenges faced by people who are blind and visually impaired (BVI). Although graphical information is ubiquitous in today's digital world, the vast majority of this content is highly visual, regardless of setting. For instance, consider looking at graphs in a work report, diagrams in a classroom, figures in a magazine article, images on the internet, photographs of friends on social networking sites, or maps for determining your location and finding routes through an unfamiliar building or city. All of these scenarios consist of highly visual, digital information that is often only conveyed via graphical formats, often excluding low- and no-vision individuals from the content. While many of these visual products can be accessed through alternative means—figures have captions, web-based images have labels, social media photos are tagged, and so on—these

text-based descriptions are only sometimes present, and often do not tell the whole story as they are not designed to do so. Unfortunately, their inclusion is more often the exception than the rule and when available, the description is generally short and imprecise, failing to capture much of the information conveyed by the graphical rendering. One need only to read a few alt tags of graphics on the web to demonstrate how poorly these text descriptions convey what is represented in the graphical depiction. Diversification of design to meet a range of accessibility needs in the digital space can make the information given more valuable to users who must access information in a different way [1]. With more content moving to the electronic space, it is paramount that new solutions for graphical information access are explored in the digital domain.

The aim of this chapter is to discuss some of the factors underlying the graphics access problem faced by people who are BVI and to describe the latest class of technologies and techniques that we believe have the most potential to mitigate the problem. We first characterize the persistent challenges that have perpetuated this long-standing information access issue. We then describe some general approaches developed throughout the years to address this challenge. We specifically focus on the role of touchscreen-based smart devices (e.g., phones and tablets), which our group believes is a promising solution moving forward. We then discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages of these devices and share a few ideological positions that we believe must be advanced if we are to truly address the graphical access challenge in the context of new technology development. This chapter sets forth a clear position on the efficacy of this class of information access technology (IAT) and advocates some paradigm shifts in the way that we think about addressing this vexing access problem. It is also meant to serve as a reference for researchers and developers interested in promoting graphical accessibility via new technologies such as touchscreens.
