The University of Michigan Press (which has published two editions of my Foucault and the Government of Disability and will publish my forthcoming Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability, all in its Corporealities: Discourses on Disability series) has been at the forefront of efforts to increase the accessibility of academic publishing. The U of M Press has now released another fabulous resource: DESCRIBING VISUAL RESOURCES TOOLKIT: Describing Visual Resources for Accessibility in Arts & Humanities Publications. The introduction to the toolkit says:
The description of visual resources is a crucial component of accessible digital publications, as it affords access to the information contained in images for the many people with disabilities that affect reading, and for all the technologies that interact with publications when indexing, searching, or converting text to speech. Description makes visual resources more discoverable and sustainable, and makes publications more useful to more people.
In academic publications in the arts and humanities, description must be scholarly as well as accessible, and in line with existing standards: metadata, copyright, and disciplinary conventions. It is therefore best managed by the scholars, academic publishers, and arts organizations who create the publications.
The resources in this toolkit are designed to support authors, editors, publishers, and arts organizations in advancing the description of visual resources for accessibility in arts and humanities publications.
Get the toolkit here. Though the toolkit is a resource for publication in the arts and humanities, descriptions of other visual resources (such as Powerpoint, writing on whiteboards, posters, etc.) should also be provided to participants in workshops, at conferences, and so on. CSWIP (among other philosophy societies) has begun to include recommendations for oral descriptions in its accessibility guidelines.
posted by Shelley
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