feat: support Highcharts charting library #539
Description
Summary
Add support for Highcharts as a third-party charting library that maidr can work with.
Background
Highcharts is one of the most widely used commercial charting libraries, popular in enterprise dashboards and business intelligence applications. It renders charts as SVG by default. chart2music provides a Highcharts integration example with visual sync, demonstrating that bidirectional interaction between Highcharts and accessibility tooling is feasible.
What This Involves
- Binder/Adapter: Create an adapter that extracts series data and configuration from Highcharts chart instances and generates the MAIDR JSON schema.
- SVG Highlighting: Highcharts renders SVG elements that can be targeted with CSS selectors for highlighting.
- Visual Sync: Highcharts exposes APIs for programmatically triggering tooltips and point highlighting, enabling visual synchronization with maidr's keyboard navigation.
- Chart Types: Highcharts supports line, bar, column, area, scatter, pie, heatmap, box plot, waterfall, treemap, and many more.
Considerations
- Highcharts has a well-documented API for accessing chart data, series, and points programmatically.
- Highcharts already has its own accessibility module — maidr support would complement this with sonification, braille, and enhanced navigation.
- Commercial licensing considerations for testing and examples.
Reference
- chart2music Highcharts example: https://codepen.io/chart2music/full/QWmZrKj
- Highcharts: https://www.highcharts.com/
- Highcharts Accessibility Module: https://www.highcharts.com/docs/accessibility/accessibility-module