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Image description bootcamp in 2 parts: PART 1 – Theory: Why THIS image HERE? Writing education-focused alt text (and beyond) for equitable learning

Handouts

Scheduled at 9:00am in Penrose 2 on Tuesday, November 17.

#43514

Speaker(s)

  • Laura Ciporen, Digital Content Accessibility Manager, McGraw Hill Education

Session Details

  • Length of Session: 5-6-hr
  • Format: Lab
  • Expertise Level: Beginner
  • Type of session: Pre-conference

Summary

Part 1: Learn the approach and go over a few examples. (Standalone session.) Do you want all your learners to benefit from the rich information contained in your content's images but suspect that screen reader users are missing out? Unsure how to create meaningful and useful descriptions worthy of your learning materials? Come to this bootcamp to learn, practice, and become confident in applying an education-focused technique for writing meaningful image descriptions.

Abstract

In the opening portion of this two-part bootcamp, you will be introduced to some factors that make educational image descriptions special, then we will cover a specific mindset and deceptively simple approach to determining what information in an image truly matters to the learner. We will analyze the image's purpose in its context, what messages the image is sending to those who can see it, and how factors like assessments vs. initial learning should impact the contents of an image description. Part 2 of the bootcamp will be spent getting familiar with this new thought process and working our way through numerous examples. Theory is the start, but practice is essential for cementing true understanding. Some examples of types of images include icons, graphs, screenshots in how-to documents, and more. We will discuss why some images that may appear decorative aren't and how to tell if an image needs a long description in addition to its alt text. We will broach the topic of describing people's appearance (its benefits and pitfalls). The result will not only be finely crafted descriptions for the images we worked on, but a confident ability to describe just about anything. Share your tricky images ahead of time and we can work through them in the bootcamp. Google form: https://forms.gle/LDtpMiejNJPaw61V8

Keypoints

  1. Even if you didn't choose an image and aren't a SME you can still write a meaningful description.
  2. Asking "why is this here?" is a powerful tool, but using it correctly takes some practice.
  3. Organizing the information in image descriptions, and doing so consistently, is essential.

Disability Areas

Cognitive/Learning, Vision

Topic Areas

Other, Uncategorized

Speaker Bio(s)

Laura Ciporen

IAAP CPACC. Creating inclusive content (with WCAG-based accessibility) for higher education since 2015.

Handout(s)

Do you want all your learners to benefit from the rich information contained in your content's images but suspect that screen reader users are missing out? Unsure how to create meaningful and useful descriptions worthy of your learning materials? Come to this bootcamp to learn, practice, and become confident in applying an education-focused technique for writing meaningful image descriptions. We'll start with the thought process then work through examples from graphs to laughing children.