Helping small business owners calculate their break-even point

STUDY

Helping small business owners calculate their break-even point

Customer

U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) helps Americans grow businesses and create jobs by providing resources and tools, access to capital; opportunities in Federal contracting; access to entrepreneurial education

Challenge

Many businesses have difficulties being able to calculate their break-even point, As a key supporter of small businesses, The Small Business Administration (SBA) wanted to help its users calculate this important data point. As part of our work on SBA.gov, we built an intuitive and accessible break-even point calculator for small business owners.

We made sure the calculator was accessible for colorblind users. When developing this tool, accessibility was a top priority. To make it usable for people with all types of color vision, we paid close attention to contrast. We also used both shapes and colors to differentiate lines on the Break-Even Point Graph. This makes it easy for all users to distinguish between the different types of data shown in the graph.

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Solution

Gornium was tasked with developing the Break-Even Point calculator as part of our work on the SBA.gov platform. Through this tool, we’re empowering small business owners with the information they need to plan effectively for the future.

We used Data-Driven Documents (D3) to develop a custom Break-Even Point Graph. D3 is a JavaScript library that creates data visualizations using HTML, CSS, and SVG. While out-of-the-box tools would have hindered the team’s ability to add custom features, D3 allowed us to build our tool exactly how we wanted. Through an interactive graph, users can see at a glance how many sales they'd need to make to break even. They can also click on the graph to see how this would change depending on the number of units sold.

Results

We built the tool to be screen reader-friendly. To start, we added a description of the Break-Even Point Graph in the SVG. But on its own, this wouldn’t have given visually impaired users the same experience with the graph. To solve this problem, we added a screen-reader-friendly table that provides the same information as the graph right below it. We also adjusted the description of the graph so that screen readers direct users to the table.

Technologies and Tools

D3.js, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SVG, ARIA, WCAG.