As U.S. midterm election results trickle in this week, a large portion of Americans won’t be able to see the country’s map filling up with blue and red. That’s why Brandon Biggs, the founder and CEO of XR Navigation, is launching an accessible live U.S. election-results map for low-vision or blind users like him.
The map offers interactive visual, audio, tactile and text-based features to broaden the ways in which people can follow local and statewide races in real time. For instance, they can feel waves of blue and red through braille dots or hear results read aloud.
For users who are color-blind, these options reduce the reliance on the color-coded graphics that are a longstanding staple of election results. They also help people with limited mobility by allowing them to navigate the map through keyboard commands rather than a mouse. And the different features benefit people with autism and dyslexia who may have difficulty processing traditional maps and graphics.
XR Navigation makes these features possible through Audiom, a digital map viewing and editing tool.
“Audiom was created because maps are increasingly part of how society makes decisions,” Biggs said in a press release. “Our goal is that every map should be usable to everyone, and the election map is one example of how we can make that geographic information available to people who have historically been left out of these conversations.”
Access the election results map here.
Brandon Biggs launching an accessible live election-results map for low-vision users is such a meaningful use of XR Navigation. The point that many Americans cannot see the red-and-blue map fill in really lands. I read this on a short break between rounds of Suika Game and it stuck with me.