If we are not counted, how do we count?

What are the consequences when a country's data strategy ignores certain categories, such as minorities or more vulnerable people?

This is what happens in Italy with the national disability data. That is why we designed Disabled Data, to count the uncounted and raise awareness on their exclusion from official statistics.

What we did

  • Data storytelling
  • Data visualization
  • Web design
  • Front-end dev.
  • UX

Client

Fight The Stroke

The problem
Data? What data?

National data on disability (below) is often discontinued, inconsistent, not machine readable, and collected through sample surveys. Such unstructured process leads to approximate and wildly inaccurate figures. In addition, it is quite inaccessible: we calculated that to reconstruct a single dataset you need an average of 85 clicks and the download of 20 tables.

Accessibility is not just meeting web standards, but making resources truly accessible to those who need them.

The solution
Disabled Data is the answer

Disabled Data makes all the data available in a click. Thanks to the contribution of onData, we were able to think about how to make the data available to a broader audience, and above all, to imagine how the project could foster a debate about the more accurate collection and systematisation of data by national bodies.

The idea
As many facets as possible

Due to the discontinuous nature of the data, it was impossible to imagine a contiguous and interconnected dashboard. So we thought of returning as many facets as possible, displaying individual widgets, each telling a specific story, to cover all the possible sides of the complexity involved in the phenomenon.

The impact
Populating the internet with meaningful contents

Each data if finally visible, easy to understand, and intuitive to download. In a few clicks, the data visualizations can also be downloaded, or shared on one's own platforms. Disabled Data is a new tool at disposal to support the work of journalist, policy makers, social worker, but also media producers and creators, to populate the internet with meaningful and informed content.

Fully accessible
Data is now accessible, but the charts?

We considered accessibility from the point of view of charts as well. According to our preliminary research, very few projects support the translation of a graphic for visually-impaired users. Building upon that, we designed an algorithm to automate descriptive texts based on the graph data. The picture below shows the chart on the left and the text that screen readers narrate to describe it.

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Sheldon.studio connects data technology and design to unfold the complex things through great projects.