Alt-Text as Poetry Workshop
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30th
10:30 AM – 12:00 PM
moderated by Emily Sara
Alt-text is an essential part of web accessibility. It is often overlooked or understood through the lens of compliance, as an unwelcome burden to be met with minimum effort. How can we instead approach alt-text thoughtfully and creatively?
Alt-Text as Poetry is a collaborative project by Shannon Finnegan and Bojana Coklyat. The purpose of the Alt-Text as Poetry project is not to tell the participant how to write alt-text (there are many existing resources that provide guidelines and how-tos). The primary intent is to put alt-text on one’s radar (if it wasn’t already), to get one thinking about it creatively, and to explore a few of the key questions that come up when translating images into text.
Shannon & Bojana hope what you read and experience in the Alt-Text as Poetry workshop makes it clear that, like all accessibility practices, writing alt-text requires ongoing practice, learning, and collaboration.
(Image Description: A video of a light blue rectangle and yellow circle with an I in the top left hand corner. A cursor glides across the screen and clicks on the yellow circle. A message unfurls in a san serif font in dark blue text on a white background. The message says the alt text as poetry workshop by Shannon Finnegan is taking place over zoom on Wednesday September 30th, 2020 from 10:30 am to 12 noon and will be limited to 50 students. The workshop is part of the disability justice conversations that we will be holding this semester. The bottom of the square has a simplified yellow mountain and sun illustration. The left hand corner folds up to reveal the gdes logo.)