MatplotAlt: A Python Library for Adding Alt Text to Matplotlib Figures in Computational Notebooks
| dc.contributor.author | Nylund, Kai | en_US |
| dc.contributor.author | Mankoff, Jennifer | en_US |
| dc.contributor.author | Potluri, Venkatesh | en_US |
| dc.contributor.editor | Aigner, Wolfgang | en_US |
| dc.contributor.editor | Andrienko, Natalia | en_US |
| dc.contributor.editor | Wang, Bei | en_US |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-05-26T06:37:33Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-05-26T06:37:33Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2025 | |
| dc.description.abstract | We present MatplotAlt, an open-source Python package for easily adding alternative text to Matplotlib fgures. MatplotAlt equips Jupyter notebook authors to automatically generate and surface chart descriptions with a single line of code or command, and supports a range of options that allow users to customize the generation and display of captions based on their preferences and accessibility needs. Our evaluation indicates that MatplotAlt's heuristic and LLM-based methods to generate alt text can create accurate long-form descriptions of both simple univariate and complex Matplotlib fgures. We fnd that state-of-the-art LLMs still struggle with factual errors when describing charts, and improve the accuracy of our descriptions by prompting GPT4-turbo with heuristic-based alt text or data tables parsed from the Matplotlib fgure. | en_US |
| dc.description.sectionheaders | Inclusive Visualization | |
| dc.description.seriesinformation | Computer Graphics Forum | |
| dc.identifier.doi | 10.1111/cgf.70119 | |
| dc.identifier.issn | 1467-8659 | |
| dc.identifier.pages | 12 pages | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.70119 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://diglib.eg.org/handle/10.1111/cgf70119 | |
| dc.publisher | The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. | en_US |
| dc.rights | Attribution 4.0 International License | |
| dc.rights.uri | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | |
| dc.title | MatplotAlt: A Python Library for Adding Alt Text to Matplotlib Figures in Computational Notebooks | en_US |