Design Fellow Jonathan Zong is being recognized for his work creating assistive technology that turns online visual data, such as charts and graphs, into text-to-speech, allowing blind and visually impaired people to access visual information that is frequently included in online material, but often not translated into accessible text.

“As institutions increasingly rely on data visualization to communicate important information visually—from election results to COVID-19 case rates—lack of equitable information access for blind and low-vision people excludes many from participating fully in public life,” says Zong.

“Our work at the MIT Visualization Group creating text-based interfaces for non-visual data exploration helps these users conduct self-guided data exploration and participate more fully in conversations about data with sighted collaborators.