I didn't actually look at the site that's being complained about but SVG charts are actually the way to go in terms of accessibility, and they can certainly be rendered client side (but maybe shouldn't be, as you say, if the data is static). Charts made this way definitely beat out an image with a description
svg accessibility stuff (not my blog, just one I found after a quick search): http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2013/12/using-aria-enhance...