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Alt-Text as Poetry

Authors

Essential Questions

  • How do we shift away from compliance-oriented approaches to accessibility?
  • How do we create spaces and experiences that disabled people not only can access but want to access?
  • How can we write alt-text thoughtfully and creatively?
  • What can alt-text learn from poetry?

Introduction

Alt-text is an essential part of web accessibility, making visual content accessible to blind people and people living with low vision. It is often overlooked altogether 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? In this workshop, we will reframe alt-text as a type of poetry and practice writing it together.

Target Audience / Prerequisite & Pre-Assessment

Age range: middle school through adult

Prerequisite & pre-assessment: n/a

Outcomes & Goals

In this workshop we will practice describing images.

Students will walk away with a deeper understanding of web accessibility and alt-text.

Pacing / Duration

  • :05 Welcome, introductions, access check
  • :10 Introduction to alt-text
  • :20 Why it is helpful to think of alt-text as a type of poetry?
  • :50 Four alt-text writing exercises
  • :05 Wrap-up and sharing resources

Materials Needed

Exercises To Do Before Class

n/a

Vocabulary

  • Alt-text: Alt-text is read by screen readers in place of images allowing the content and function of the image to be accessible to those with visual or certain cognitive disabilities.
  • Screen reader: An assistive technology that reads the information on a digital display.

Exercise Descriptions

What is alt-text:

From Rooted in Rights’ Accessibility Guide: “Similar to audio description, image descriptions and alt-text are most often used in order to provide people who are blind and low vision access to visual information. But whereas audio descriptions are audio-based and primarily used for video, alt-text and image descriptions are text-based and meant to describe still images for those who use screen readers to navigate the web, or for anyone who has trouble understanding the visual information in an image.”

A screen reader is a software that reads the information on a digital display. For example, on a webpage, the screen reader might start with the navigation, next it would go to the title, then the first paragraph, then the second paragraph, etc. The screen reader outputs that text either to a synthetic voice or a braille display. When the screen reader encounters an image, it can’t “read” it. So instead it reads the alt-text, a piece of text that is associated with the image that describes it.

As we think about the expressive potential of alt-text it is important to stay rooted in alt-text as an accessibility practice. The goal is to create an equitable internet, which includes descriptions that provide an equivalent experience to seeing the image.

Wikipedia’s style guide offers these questions to ask yourself when you are writing alt-text:

  • Why is this non-text content here?
  • What information is it presenting?
  • What purpose does it fulfill?

Alt-text and you

Because of the ways the internet works these days, almost everyone has the opportunity to write alt-text and contribute to making the internet a more accessible place.

You have the option to add alt-text to your posts on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Depending on the platform you use, it may be possible to add alt-text to your personal website or blog (and if the platform doesn’t include a field for entering alt-text, you can usually work around that by including an image description in the caption).

And depending on where you work and volunteer you may be able to influence the accessibility practices there. Even if the website or social media aren’t directly your responsibility, it’s worth asking questions about your organization’s web accessibility and making sure people are aware of alt-text.

Why think of alt-text as poetry?

By framing alt-text as a type of poetry, we can approach writing it with some of the ideas and strategies that have been developed by poets. There are three things that we have found to be particularly helpful.

  1. Attention to Language

Simply by writing alt-text with thought and care, we shift the process. What words are we using? What are their connotations? What is the tone of our writing? What is the voice? How do those align with or contrast with the tone and perspective of the image?

  1. Word Economy

Sighted people have a tendency to over-describe images. While there are times for long and lavish descriptions, alt-text usually aims to be concise. For most images, one or two sentences will do. Poetry has a lot to teach us about paring down language and being expressive, while being brief.

  1. Experimental Approach

We have so much to learn from poetry about being more playful and exploratory in how we write alt-text. There are lots of complex and interesting questions that come up when translating visual information into text. We need to try out different ways to doing this and learn from each other's strategies and techniques.

Exercises:

For the exercises students are paired. They are asked to do the writing independently and afterwards discuss with a partner.

Writing Exercise 1:

Each pair is given an image.

This exercise is adapted from “Audio Description as a Pedagogical Tool” by Georgina Kleege & Scott Wallin published in Disability Studies Quarterly.

This is designed to be a warm up so don’t worry about getting things right — just write down whatever pops into your head.

List things (objects, people, stuff, nouns) that are present in the image or related to the image.

Aim to write 5 words, but if you are on a roll, write as many as come to mind.

List descriptive words or adjectives that describe the image, a part of the image, or your response to it.

Again, aim to write 5 words, but if you are on a roll, write as many as come to mind.

Share your writing and discuss with your partner:

  • Are there words that you both have on your list?
  • Are there words on your partner’s list that surprised you? Or made you notice something about the image?
  • Any other thoughts or things you noticed about the process in general

Writing Exercise 2:

This exercise is about the idea of objectivity. Many people have advocated for describers to be as objective as possible, allowing the person engaging with the description to make their own subjective interpretation.

However, there has been a lot of push back on the idea that objectivity should be a central goal of description. Objectivity is incredibly elusive — where is the line between fact and interpretation? Do we say “smile” or do we say “lips turned up at the corners”?

The pretense of objectivity plays into existing power structures. “Objectivity” often validates the perspective of white, cis men while marking other perspectives “subjective.”

Furthermore, it is unclear if an “objective” approach produces quality descriptions. Trying to be objective often leads to precise, almost clinical descriptions that can be hard to understand and may be a stark contrast to the tone of the image.

For this exercise, you’ll need a photo that you took. If you have a smartphone, it’s probably easiest to pull up a photo there — it can be the last photo on your camera roll or the last photo you posted to social media.

Describe this image as though you are a complete stranger who has stumbled across this image. Pretend you’ve never seen it before and have no context for the image.

Describe the image from your own perspective and as though you were describing it to your best friend.

Share your writing and discuss with your partner:

  • Are the descriptions you wrote similar or different? In what ways?
  • Is there anything you noticed about writing in those two different modes?
  • Do you like one description better than the other?
  • Is there a middle ground between these approaches?

Writing Exercise 3:

Each pair of students is given a second image.

This exercise is about how we might structure and prioritize information in an image description. Someone using a screen reader may only listen to the beginning on the description before skipping to the next thing so it is important to consider that. Alt-text guides often recommend starting with the most important information. Others recommend starting general and then getting more detailed and specific.

The structure of the alt-text may also be important for impact. If you remember this example: “A screenshot of me being very impressed by my nephew Harry’s new hat. The hat is a plastic green roof taken from a doll’s house.” Here Madison is using the structure of the information for comedic effect. She starts by saying she is impressed with the hat and then reveals that it is the roof of a doll’s house. So it’s good to think of the structure of information as another aspect of the description that you have creative control over.

  1. Write a single sentence to describe the image. The sentence should capture whatever you think is most important about the image.

  2. Now write a second sentence about the second most important thing in or about the image.

  3. Now write a third sentence about the third most important thing.

Share your writing and discuss with your partner:

  • Did you and your partner structure your description in similar or different ways?
  • Are there things your partner prioritized that you don’t think are important? Or vice versa?
  • Any other things you noticed or thought about when you were writing.

Writing Exercise 4:

Each pair of students is given a headshot.

This exercise is about identity and representation. Lots of information about identity is communicated visually, but that information is often filtered through guesswork, interpretation, and bias. When and how do we describe race, gender, disability status, age, and body size (height, weight, shape, etc)? How do we acknowledge the visual information about identity without making assumptions about how a person identifies?

With this in mind:

Describe yourself as you are today in 3–5 sentences.

Describe the person in the headshot you selected in 3–5 sentences.

Share your writing and discuss with your partner:

  • Chat about the process of writing these descriptions.
  • Were there things you felt comfortable describing about yourself that didn’t feel comfortable describing about someone else? Or vice versa?
  • In disability spaces, people are often asked to self-describe images of themselves. What are some pros and cons of this approach?

Student Reflections, Takeaways & Next Steps

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Post Session

References

Implementation Guidance & Teaching Reflection

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