Re: Practice Describing Pictures, anyone game?

Kynn,

How academic an exercise do you want this be?  Most descriptions I have come
across (which includes the CAM stuff) is very short and functional -- this
include descriptive video.  Now, a static web page does not have real time
constraints, but aren't most of your friends and colleagues (including those
who happen to have vision impairments) interested in why YOU took a
particular photo, who is in it, and what were your impressions at the time?
Seems to me, only the photographer can answer these questions!

Take a look at the ultrasounds I posted for MY friends and relatives.  I got
good feedback from my friends who are blind, and much to my surprise (I
should have predicted this, but I didn't), family who were sighted liked the
descriptions too!  (They appreciate the help with knowing what they were
looking at.)  I latter learned that most people did not realize that the
ONLY reason I bothered with descriptions (of course I would have included
ALT text) was for the benefit of my blind friends!  (This also proved to me
that _I_ am still learning lessons about the importance of universal
access.)  Photos can be found at URL:
http://www.clark.net/pub/bbailey/baby-21apr99.html

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but sometimes it is nice if someone
tells you -- Just what the Hell is that?

-- Bruce Bailey


Kynn Bartlett wrote:

> Accurately describing picture content is necessary for accessibility
> considerations, especially LONGDESC/D-Link.  However, giving good
> and useful picture descriptions is not as easy as it sounds; there
> is a certain art to it, and you can improve with practice.
>
> I recently went on a trip to Rome to speak at the E-Commerce
> Summit (http://www.e-commerce-summit.com/) and the day before
> the summit started, I went on a commercial tour of Rome and took
> many pictures of what I was seeing.  I would like to make these
> available on the web, and, as a practice exercise, I'd like to see
> if anyone (who can see my pictures) would be interested in helping
> to describe these pictures or at least evaluating the descriptions
> that I or someone else has provided.

Received on Thursday, 11 November 1999 14:07:01 UTC