Developed by The DIAGRAM Center (Digital Image And Graphic Resources for Accessible Materials), a Benetech Global Literacy initiative, the Poet Training Tool is a web based image description resource that helps people learn when and how to describe various types of images frequently found in educational books. Users of this tool have access to best practice guidelines and hands-on exercises that help cultivate skills for writing effective image descriptions for critical visual content.
This is one among many items I regularly tag in Pinboard as cooltech, and automatically autoshares as #cogdogcooltech to Twitter and Mastodon. Now the Coolness is in OEG Connect
Have you ever been to Cool? Do you know of something cool I should share? Just reply below and I will check it out.
This is an incredibly useful site for not only learning about creating image descriptions to accessibility but a fantastic set of interactive activities and subject specific examples to help anyone improve their practice.
It’s a well designed resource!
Start with When to Describe for a decision tree process to help you determine when/if alternative descriptions are needed (see the full flow chart) as well as an options new to me- tactile graphics. You get to practice through 8 different examples that traverse the decision tree.
Next, and where it gets even better, is How to Describe images with a set of 8 examples to work through guidelines for key element- context, audience, layout, function, and tone. And then specific examples for subjects like Chemistry Art, Math but also media types- Maps, Diagrams, Tables, Flowcharts. Each starts with general guidelines for the image, then a place to practice, and even a template to use to help you organize the needed information, and a suggested example
Practice Describing where you upload your own image, select from a series of options to classify what kind of image it is. POET provides some suggestions, and then you practice writing. There is no evaluation, but the framework is good practice.
That is not really a fantastic description, I wanted just to have a screenshot.
I go back as well to something that has been useful
where the author shares a framework of “Object-action-context”:
Something that I learned from talking to Bex is that there is a storytelling aspect to writing descriptions. It doesn’t necessarily make sense to go from left to right describe everything in an image because that might lose the central message or create a disorienting feeling. For that reason, I came up with a framework that I recommend called object-action-context.
The object is the main focus. The action describes what’s happening, usually what the object is doing. The context describes the surrounding environment.
I recommend this format because it keeps the description objective, concise, and descriptive.
I have gotten much more deliberate and focused on writing image descriptions. I am not convinced there is are absolutely correct ways to do it, but it’s always better than ignoring doing it.
Also, for users here of this Discourse powered site, when you add an image to your post (just drag and drop from your device ot use the Add Image/File icon in the middle of the tool bar), by default the image description is the file name, and 99% of the time that does not help.
Once you image us uploaded, though, on the right side preview of your post, look for the
pencil icon under the image to compose a better alternative description.
What are your go to suggestions for learning to write image descriptions? How often do you do this in regular practice? And give POET a try and let us know what you think of it as a resource.
