Alt Text Writing Workshop
Saturday, November 22
Facilitated by Olivia Dreisinger
12 - 2pm
ONLINE via Zoom
Free
Alt text, a written description of an image or visual material, is an essential part of web accessibility. Alt text is one way to create access to visual content for people who are blind, low vision, or have certain cognitive disabilities.
In this workshop, led by Olivia Dreisinger, we will practice writing alt text in an arts setting. The workshop will start with a 30-minute presentation. Olivia will first talk about alt text in a disability context, then provide examples of creative or thoughtful approaches to alt text.
The remainder of the workshop will be set aside to practice writing alt text together. We will do two writing exercises to practice describing. For the first exercise, Olivia will select an image for everyone to describe. For the second, participants will work with an image of their choosing.
By the end of the workshop participants will learn how to write alt text in an arts setting, expanding access in the arts and learn about “access as practice.”
Materials Required:
Bring an image you’d like to describe. This can be an artist headshot, an artwork, a found image, or even just an image in your phone. It can really be anything!
Facilitated by Olivia Dreisinger (b. 1991, Ladner, BC) who is a disabled writer, scholar, filmmaker, and PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia. Her own fluctuating abilities dictate how she produces work—a process that regularly leads her to new and generative mediums to explore. Her work often takes a documentary approach. Some of her recent work includes Alt Text Selfies, a collaboration with artists Bojana Coklyat and Finnegan Shannon that explores and celebrates self-portrait descriptions shared online; Weaning, a photogrammetry series that documents her post-weaning mood disorder; and What Kind of Mother, a documentary about her mother’s suicide and her own desire to have children.
Please note that this workshop will not have live ASL interpretation but Auto-Captions (English) will be present throughout the workshop.
