GIS

A class of software systems — such as ArcGIS, QGIS, and open-source geospatial libraries — that capture, store, manipulate, analyze, and visualize geographic and spatial data by linking location coordinates with attribute information. GIS underpins urban planning, public health, environmental monitoring, transportation, emergency response, and increasingly data journalism and civic tech. For accessibility practitioners, GIS is relevant in two ways: the professional GIS tools themselves are often inaccessible to blind and low-vision analysts, and the maps and geovisualizations produced with GIS frequently reach the public through channels that lack alt text, data tables, or screen-reader-compatible interfaces.