Sarah @friskycomics@mastodon.art

I've eaten dinner, so time for another #ComicsA11y link!

So last August, the SF State Comics Studies Program, Program in Visual Impairments, and Longmore Institute of Disability hosted a one-day symposium to explore considerations for adapting comics for blind and low vision readers. They posted the whole thing on youtube and there was a lot of interesting ideas discussed!

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzjQM5GnQBGI2XRwTfOfdIzgQTh5PI0GJ

#accessibility #comics #webtoon

And I just realized these were all tagged #ComicA11y and not #ComicsA11y. Welcome to Sarah being medium at hashtags.

So when making my own comic website #ComicsA11y friendly I had a few different approaches to the comic itself:

1. I uploaded each panel of the comic individually, rather than posting everything as one image (similar to how I post the comic on social media). Not only does this make it easy to change the layout of the page for different sized screens, but I can individually apply the alt text to each panel, making it more manageable.

If you're more of a fan of talks as your method of learning cool new things about #ComicsA11y, Jessica Jordan had a wonderful talk as JSConf EU 2019 about Crafting Comics for Literally Everyone. I really like how she built out the speech bubbles with html/css, so they were separate from the background of the panel, and how that read on a screenreader. https://2019.jsconf.eu/jessica-jordan/crafting-comics-for-literally-everyone.html

I really loved Lucy Bellwood 's 100 Demon Dialogues comics, and the folks at Axess Lab wrote a nice article on the process of writing the alt text for the ebook version. Bonus points: They do include video examples of reading the comic with a screenreader! https://axesslab.com/accessible-comics/ #ComicsA11y

Do you ever find yourself trying to figure out HOW to write accessible alt text for your comic? Veronica Lewis wrote this really good guide on doing just that that I apply to my website and how I describe panels! https://veroniiiica.com/2018/11/29/how-to-write-alt-text-digital-comics/. #ComicsA11y

Morning humans! One of my passions (partly because of the day job) is #accessibility, and I like finding ways to apply that to comics. I'm going to post links to resources on helping to make your comics more accessible at the hashtag #ComicsA11y (As well as just replying directly to this thread)