Formative Submission

Art and Image Descriptions

While teaching Sculpture at CCW Foundation, I have become interested in the relationship between Fine Art and accessibility for disabled people. Our studios can be sensorially overwhelming and, over time, can become physically inaccessible to some disabled people. Alongside this, there are many aspects of accessibility which are not covered in the course, leading to a continuation of practices which are exclusive of disabled viewers, students or artists. (The Horizontals, 2017)

I thought it would be interesting to involve students in the topic of accessibility by running a session on Image Descriptions as a method of conveying their work to viewers who are blind or have low vision. The session would also be a creative experiment, encouraging the students to consider which aspects of their work are the most important to convey, and help them to understand a link between sound, language and image. The workshop would then lead into a sound art exercise, to encourage students to partake and learn new skills.

The Image Description exercise would involve asking students to work in pairs. Each would have an image of an artwork which they write a description of. They then swap descriptions and attempt to draw the image that has been described. The workshop could then involve guidance on useful image description practice, resulting in each student writing an accurate description for one of their own works. Image captions are now increasingly used on social media and in museum contexts (Birdbility, 2024), so experiencing these early on may inform and encourage students to use the practice.

The premise of the workshop would be to create an aural exhibition, incorporating image descriptions of artworks into a soundscape. Students would be encouraged to spend time listening and recording sound to add to the atmosphere of their image description. Using simple sound editing tools, the students would edit these recordings together and present the works for a listening-crit. I am interested in exploring ways to make the workshop itself accessible to Blind and/or Deaf students.

Bibliography

Accessible Publishing (2024) Guide to image Descriptions. Available at https://www.accessiblepublishing.ca/a-guide-to-image-description/ (Accessed May 2024)

Birdability (2024) What is this “image description” thing all about? Available athttps://www.birdability.org/blog/what-is-this-image-description-thing-all-about#:~:text=Image%20descriptions%20describe%20the%20contents,in%3B%20Android%20uses%20TalkBack (Accessed May 2024)

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Cooper Hewitt, (2024) Cooper Hewitt Guide to Image Descriptions. Available at https://www.cooperhewitt.org/cooper-hewitt-guidelines-for-image-description/ (Accessed May 2024)

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Wellcome Collection (2024) Being Human Captions. Available at https://wellcomecollection.org/pages/X3MY5hEAACQAoWCy (Accessed May 2024)