And we're back.
Okay, we are here with our first talk of the
evening.
This is the one that we probably talked about,
looking forward to.
We're going to talk to Cordelia Mcgee-Tubb.
She is one of my favorite names in accessibility
right now.
It's fun to say.
We are going to talk about accessible comics.
So hi Cordelia.
Hello.
I'm here with Matt and Leonie.
I'm going to give you, I'm going to give you
control of the screen here.
There you have it.
Okay, thank you.
And we will turn it over to you to do your
thing.
Awesome.
Okay.
Yay, I'm super excited to be the first talk
of # ID24.
I use that on Twitter and your other favorite
Social Media networks.
As Billy mentioned, I'm Cordelia I go by Cordelia
Dillon on the internet.
The background information on me is I've been
an amateur cartoonist for most of my life.
And as of the past few years, I've also been
an accessibility specialist.
And those who can't see my screen, I've got
an illustration of myself waving with a giant
balloon.
I'm no longer an amateur cartoonist because
I just decided to go off and get a master's
degree in comics.
So now I'm officially a master of comics which
is a title I'm still trying to live up to.
But that's why I wanted to talk about comics
today at ID24.
Because something that I realized, I actually
started comics graduate school and started
by accessibility career in the same year.
The deeper I got I got into them, the further
away they seemed to be.
In comics school we were drawing pictures
and go back inform work the next day and make
products accessible for people who are blind
and there was this disconnect between what
I was doing at school and doing at work.
so I'm really interested in bridging those
two things by way much accessible comics.
That's what we're going to be talking about
today.
And before we get into that, I wanted to share
one of my favorite lessons that I learned
in graduate school which is comics are about
relationships.
So on our first day of grad school, the department
told us that everything is a comic.
We'll get back to that later on in this talk.
And that the fundamental building blocks of
a comic are relationships.
And he identified the relationship in three
different ways.
The first is the relationship between an image
and image.
For example, here I've got a square illustrated
panel of myself, clutching my stomach and
looking down, potentially in pain.
But in the second panel my head is thrust
up and smiling.
I'm clutching my stomach with laughter.
That's a story told in two images.
The second type of relationship in comic is
that image and text, so here I've got a single
panel of me raising in I eyebrows skeptically,
saying are you serious?
The other type is the relationship of image
and culture.
Even in a single image you can tell a story
as long as the reader is familiar with that
reference.
Here I've got myself as the Mona Lisa.
And I should preface this by saying I'm an
auto bio-cartoonist.
So you'll see a lot of illustration of me
throughout the day.
Here I am.
I want you to keep in mind these three different
types of relationships as we talk about how
to make these relationships accessible for
all different types of readers.
So comics is a cool medium.
I think a lot of us are fans of comics.
I think there are reasons why comics resonate
with people.
The biggest one is tangible, is that they're
such an expressive medium.
For example, here I've got on the slide I
page from little Nemo.
This is from 1905.
And it's this little Nemo character who you
may be familiar with is walking into slumber
land on stilts.
As he starts walking further and further,
the panels get taller and taller to communicate
the depth of the space that he's in.
And when he starts to fall off of the stilts,
the panel gets smaller and smaller.
That's one of the beautiful ways as comics
works as a creative medium of expressing space
by changing the bounding boxes that you're
interacting with.
Similarly, like one of my absolute favorite
comics, is El Deafo.
Which is auto biographical book about how
she lost her hearing at a young age.
This page is one that resonates with me a
lot where, it's the moment where the protagonist
who is the young girl depicted right now as
a rabbit first discovers that she's lost her
hearing.
So in these panels, her mom is saying something
to her.
There's a speech balloon coming out of her
mom's mouth.
Buff it's large and empty.
What's really beautiful about this is this
comic is giving sound space in a way that
I think is very unique to the comics medium.
So this is something that I think is very,
like I said, specific to comics and it's something
that we want to make sure I share with everyone.
Another thing I'll mention about comics is
they share stories and information in a easily
consumable way.
There's a reason why people refer to comic
as an accessible medium.
We'll get to that, why it's an ironic expression.
A lot of times I heard from librarians comic
books are great for students with learning
disabilities because comic books are easy
for them to consume content, to consume information
probably better than reading a textbook.
It's a great way to distill the large concepts.
For example, the NIB is a comics publication
that does a ton of comics recently.
They have a lot of material to work with all
over the world.
And they tell interesting, long forum personal
comics.
There's a lot-- I read comics because I love
them.
But there's a lot of cool stuff happening
in the comics medium.
One thing I enjoyed about it is finding ways
I can use comics to teach about accessibility.
My favorite comic I made is this one of this
character called designer dude who has a mustache
and a large beard and is a stereotypical designer
guy I've created.
And he's standing there looking uncomfortable
with three people around him.
He says, why are you all standing so close
to me.
One of the people says, hovering is the only
way we can interact with you.
My little joke how designers hide important
interactions on hover.
You can use comics for more important accessibility
or I guess less cynical accessibility uses
like when I was a UX, I worked with Jessie
on a series of posters to promote reusable
component.
Here we've got a modern component that's showing
off its features.
It's a model that's psychology and has arms
and legs and saying, give me all your focus.
There's a lot of fun stuff you can do with
comics.
And again one of my absolute favorite comics
is this one by Constanza Yovaniniz.
This is from her comics, the post Guide to
braille.
This is a web comic that's about braille that's
introducing readers to what braille it.
How it works, the basics of it.
And she's using comics as a way to share that
information which is really cool.
But as you probably guessed by now, while
we can use comics to talk about accessibility,
most comics have an accessibility barrier
which they rely strongly on visuals.
Comics, those three different types of relationships,
each one includes an image.
And people with vision impairments this can
mean this wonderful accessible thing is not
accessible at all.
What we're going to talk about ways to make
comics who are accessible to people with vision
impairments.
I should mention I wear glasses.
But I do not have a larger visual impairment.
I'm going to be speaking really from the mind
set of a comics creator who is interested
in making the things I'm creating accessible
to all.
So I will be talking about the experience
of-- I will be talking about how to make comics
that can be read by people who are blind but
the experience of reading that is not my experience.
Something I have experienced, yeah.
So I take off my glasses, things get blurry
like this image on the screen and very illegible.
Sometimes I do have migraines where I get
this giant clouds and can't really see anything.
But 90% of the time I don't have too much
difficulty reading comics.
I run into accessibility barriers, a lot of
comic readers run into legibility barriers.
So my personal experience when I'm reading
comics is this is a text legible.
We talk a lot in web accessibility about making
sure text is high enough contrast.
That's true tore comics both in print and
on web.
So making sure that our contrast is good not
just for text but for important little visual
pieces that we don't want people to lose,
making sure our font size is large so people
don't have to squint at our comics and that
our thing is appropriate so people don't misread
things.
On web, this is something I'll get into.
Thinking about things like is it possible
to highlight the text in a comic while you're
reading it?
Sometimes it's -- for a lot of people it's
easier to follow along with text if you can
stick your cursor in there and highlight as
you go.
So that's something to consider here.
Another thing I often think about is a comic
high enough resolution?
If it's super blurry and small, it will be
hard for anyone even people with 2020 vision
to understand all the details of that comic.
And finally is it written in my language?
This is really important for transcription
which we're going to get into in a second.
And wait, there's one more thing.
Also is it easy to find in bookmark?
This is one of my pet peeves on the internet.
I find something amaze and I forget to bookmark
it.
I try too Google it and it's a picture of
text and I've lost it forever because I can't
search for it.
So let's talk about how we can solve some
of those problems I mentioned but also how
we can make existing comics accessible for
readers who may not be able to see them.
And that really starts with transcription.
So for transcription, really important for
accessibility is making sure we're providing
a text transcript is that can be read by assistive
technology such as screen readers.
It's important for search engines.
If you think about it, if you create this
transcript, it's readable by robots, currently
images are not.
If you write a transcript, it will be accessible
to assistive tech and automatic translator.
When I mentioned in my explore rations for
this talk, I saw a lot of comics written in
Spanish.
It's not that good.
But it's a lot easier to highlight text and
dump it into Google translate.
That's a great reason why transcripts are
use.
There's a really awesome website called Ohhnoobot
that's index a ton of different comics around
the web.
And you can type in search terms and search
for whatever comics have been transcribed
by this service.
So they currently have 144,282 comics that
have been transcribed through this service
by volunteer transcribers which is super great
because it's easily discoverable for every
user and it also means that people with vision
impairments can tell what these comics are
about.
So some things to think about as you're writing
transcripts, I would encourage if anyone is
watching this as a web cartoonist is to create
transcripts of your comics.
There's a lot of wiggle room here.
There aren't any defining guidelines quite
yet how to transcribe comics.
So it's still an emerging field.
But I think the most important thing you can
think about, several of the important things,
what is the tone of this work?
You don't want to have a transcript that's
too clinical.
And this applies to all text on the web as
well.
You want-- comics are fun.
Sometimes they're very sad.
But usually fun are pretty fun.
And really creative.
And so if you're writing a text distributions,
you want to make sure you're conveying that
same tone.
One thing I like to do is look at Netflix
for an example.
If you have watched any Netflix shows are
audio descriptions, the shows I watched, each
one has a different list for the audio descriptions
that matches the personality of the show.
Dare devil has like a super fantastic audio
description.
So think about how to really embody the voice
of your comic in your transcriptions.
Think about if this were an old time radio
show or a podcast, which is a new time radio
show, how would you tell the story to someone?
What information would you include?
How much information do you want to give away
to the reader if they can't-- how much is
too much information?
An exercise I've done with other cartoonist
when we've been thinking how to transcribe
comics is literally sit back to back.
And I will hold a piece of paper in my hand
of a comic page.
And I will tell the other person, the pieces
of the page-- I will tell them how to draw
it or tell them the information in it that
I think is useful for drawing.
And they'll try to draw the same exact page.
It forces you to think about what is the most
important thing about this comic page?
Is the layout important?
Or is the dialogue--does it matter that this
person is wearing a yellow shirt?
Should I indicate the color of every single
person's shirt or is that too much information?
It helps you create the hierarchy of the information
to share.
It's a fantastic exercise.
I highly recommend reading on describing comics.
How she describes a comic called blue hallow
and watchmen for one of the blind friends.
This is the best thing I've read on the internet
about transcribing comics.
She goes deep in how she decides when certain
things are to show.
For example, colors, it might be too much
information with the color of every single
person's shirt.
But if there's a color like a red or yellow
that is dramatically significant, she'll weave
it.
She dives into the nuances of how to describe
comics.
One of think favorite quotes from her talking
about this, broad hallow comics, I'll read
a segment of it, she says, I note if there's
comic shorthand.
Line-- dotted lines, indicating the direction
someone is looking in or stars indicating
pain.
That's because the author has chosen to present
this as a comic.
Not as a novel or a video.
And I want to preserve the feeling or the
feeling of experiencing something that's different
from other media.
So that's what she wrote about, transcribing
comics.
I love that because it's about not just, I
think I mentioned radio shows earlier in the
slide.
Not just translating into another medium,
but what are the comics technique important
to the story.
For example the large speech balloons I was
talking about earlier in El Deafo.
What are these significant things that can
be told in a comic.
Make sure you don't forget about those in
your transcript as well.
an example of a transcribed sample by Liana.
This is the first sample of blue hallow.
I'll readout her Chris for it.
White background.
Panel one, a young man is laying on his back,
on a flat armless couch, his eyes closed and
hands rash-- (Record read.)
someone says, Mr. Zane, you were about to
tell me what brought you here.-- no, I walked.
I haven't seen any taxis.
So what I love about her panel description
here is she identifies this as at first panel
and writes it like pros.
But she points out important parts of the
actual drawing style, not just the content
of the scene, not just what's happening in
the scene but he's drawing a flat cartoonish
style.
You get a sense of the tone, of this piece
and how it's going to set the scene for the
whole rest of the comic.
I have also been figuring out ways to transcribe
my comic.
As a point of comparison, I love the way she
does hers.
We should all experiment with this.
This is a first panel about my 2015 comic.
And because my comic alternated a lot between
text blocks and trace blocks that was unique
to this comic.
I decided to call that out.
My description for it is narration.-- (Record
read.)
So again, pointing out exactly what's in the
scene but also pointing out some of the stylistic
elements of it like an arrow pointing to this
figure.
I didn't include a lot of information about
the hoodie I was wearing, the type of pants
that I was wearing because I didn't think
that they were super important but something
I would love to see happen with accessible
comics down the line is multiple layers of
granular of text description.
Wouldn't it be cool if you had this description.
But if you wanted to dig in and find details,
on the web, you can get more detailed description.
So going back to the next slide here.
In terms of formatting, I haven't found agreed
upon guidelines for comic transcriptions.
I think you can learn a lot from the on transcribing
comics script essay that Liana wrote.
You can learn a lot from looking at scripts,
script for comics and movies and television
shows.
Because a comic is kind of a little bit like
an illustrated script.
You can also, I'm going to get back to this
in a second.
But there's a cool XML project that has a
potential for really structuring the way that
we talk about accessible.
The way we talk about the structure of panels.
And then in terms of actually displaying this
content, yes, there are so on the web, if
you're familiar with web development, you
can add ALT text for imagines which will read
back to the screen reader.
It has a long desk property that causes a
lot of holy wars in the accessibility community
about whether or not we should use it.
I would actually say for longer comics on
the web, better than using ALT text or-- or
have a visible link to the transcript immediately
after the comic.
Because that first of all, that provides information
for people who maybe using a screen reader
but it's also great for people who can see
the comic just fine but also want the transcript
for whatever reason.
Maybe they want to translate into another
language.
Having a transcript that all of your readers
can see is great.
You can use an accessible accordion pattern
as needed.
And you should also really consider doing
audio recordings of comics.
I've been thinking a lot about the principles
of the universal design and about giving users
choice of how to consume and interact with
content.
I think that's applicable for consumer comics.
Yes, people are-- some folks might want to
consume them visually.
Some folks might not be able to.
So having a transcript they can consume visually
or a transcript they can consume for braille
or through a screen reader speaking to them
would be cooling.
But you could also have your own audio descriptions
with their own tone of voice.
So I'm currently working on a comic book,
I'm thinking my plan for it, and I'd love
to hear people's suggestions in the comments
later.
My plan is to have my comic book but also
have a full transcript of it and an audio
version of the whole book.
A great example of audio comics is a company
called comics and power which is a comics
bookstore for blind readers.
They have a podcast, they do a lot of amazing
stuff.
And as we think more about digital comics,
something I'm excited about and recently discovered
is comics XML language written by Jason McIntosh.
He created this XML for structuring metadata
about comics.
And I think it's so beautiful so here I've
got code that I pulled off of his website
and I'll share these slides later so you can
grab that link.
But he's got a panel XMLs and within that
he's got a URL that points to an image and
a panel desk tag.
Within the panel desk tag he has the action
tag which kind of outlines here's what's happening
in this scene.
And then he's got a speech tag which tells
you which character is speaking and what text
they're speaking.
And this is really, really cool.
I'm thinking about using it for one of my
projects because I really like the structure
and think that this could extent into other
frameworks and assistive technology to really,
tell put what you need to know about comics.
And potentially this would work really well
of having a description of the comic and longer
description depending on what the reader wants
to hear.
Before I knew about this, I was working on
my own HTML JavaScript accessible comic because
I wanted to not just create a comic with a
transcript at the end but a comic that thought
about accessibility from the beginning.
These a prototype I'm working on which is
Brocedurally generated.
It's the way that it works is basically it
starts with one panel.
And if you want more panels, you can press
a key on your keyboard or press this button
at the bottom that says the story needs more
panels to get more panels in the HTML.
I'm going to show the code in a second.
Another thing I added to this is I wanted
there to be animations in the project but
I know it's an issue for a lot of people navigating
the internet.
So I've got a button owe bottom.
If I press that button, this blinking light
will stop blinking.
It's a prototype of an accessible comic.
But you click and you get more panels that
will show up in the UI.
And you can end up with a ton of different
panels.
here I'm showing this procedurally comic that
has-- it has how many panels?
Nine panels visible on the screen.
And each one, what I've done is kind of combined
an image with some text.
And this is HTML text.
So you can highlight the text if you want
to.
You can highlight it and copy and paste it
somewhere.
If you increase the screen size, the text
will increase with that.
Just try to make the most HTML friendly comic.
What I wanted to talk about is how I've been
thinking about how to provide ALT text for
this.
Here is a sample panel from this comic I've
been working on.
So each tier of this comic is a section element
with an RL label which identifies which tier
it is.
And each image itself or each panel has an
image.
And here this one has ALT text that says,
a bet with a sock.
A hairy bare leg poking out from the under
the blanket.
This is a plain panel that doesn't have text
in it.
But for the panels that have text, I'm generating
that as, you know, real HTML spans on the
page.
What I've been experimenting with, again this
is an experiment, I'd love feedback on Twitter
or something is, including the spans in line,
but making them ARIA hidden and pulling the
text into ALT text image.
Here you've got, this is one guy saying, wanna
join our burning man camp?
The other one saying, no way.
And this is just auto generated text.
So the way that this panel looks in the HTML
is it's got two different spans for that,
for the text conversations.
So I've got span ARIA hidden equals two, joining
the-- and then span-- below that I have auto
generated an image ALT that combines this
text in image description.
Evan smiles while holding the disposable coffee
cup.
Evan says, want to join our burning man camp?
In the JavaScript it looks a lot of the XML
that I showed you all, here's the description
of the panel which is Evans smile while holding
the coffee cup.
And here are the different pieces of speech.
So Evan, want to join our burning man camp?
Someone else says no way.
I've been experimenting with this as an accessible
comic.
As we're generating these panels-- because
it's an auto generated comic, we're also generating
all the accessible information about this.
and since in the actual comic none of the
men have names, they have named in the ALT
text so people can identify who's speaking.
This is an approach I'm thinking about for
digital comics.
But I think we can definitely push forward
in digital comics.
I would love to see this granular, being able
to control how much information you get about
the panels would be really, really cool.
But in my remaining time, I want to jump 7
into tactile comics because that's cool stuff.
So two years ago, I went to CSUN and I saw
Shawn Cane and talk about 3D printing comics.
And I drew this comic of myself being excited
about 3D printing comic.
My eyes are enormous and my mouth is like
I'm gritting my teeth with excitement and
staring at a 3D printing tactile comic in
braille.
Oh, my God.
Accessible comics.
The CSUN two years ago, was my first exposure
of this idea of innovative, accessible comics.
Think there's a lot of cool stuff around 3D
printing and around braille that's happening
in the physical comic space.
Since we've been talking a lot about digital.
A cool thing that came out of Mexico a few
years ago, is a comic in English it's census,
the universe in his eyes.
This is a comic in braille about an astronaut
who begins to lose his vision.
The aliens on the planet-- he can experience
the world in all these other, with all these
other senses.
So on the screen here I've got a picture of
him a picture of the cover and then a picture
of an inside of the book where it's a braille
comic.
But it also has visuals.
It's written by Jorge Grajale and Bernardo.
It's a beautiful comic that is thought about
like blind readers are the primary audience.
Braille is not tacked on.
It's a core part of the experience of reading
this comic.
And I really want to get my hands on it because
it looks extraordinary.
Similarly, perhaps you've seen or heard of
life by Phillip Meyer, this one was a popular
braille comic that I think was created in
2,013.
And it's a comic that, um is a sort of-- it's
a sort of abstract interpretation of a relationship
between two people.
And they're represented at these two different
circles.
It's a fully tactile comic.
There's no speech balloons.
No illustrations.
It's all in dots.
It's something really beautiful because as
a sighted person who doesn't know braille,
I can see how I can interact with this and
understand its symbolically.
There's a lot of cool stuff happening that
is just accessible by default.
Another really cool example is shape reader.
I don't know if people have heard of shape
reader by Ilan Manouach.
This thing blew my mind.
The shape reader is, again a fully tactile
comic.
It's tactile first and totally symbolic.
He has assigned different patterns to different
meanings.
So some patterns will mean different emotions.
Some patterns will representative places,
different characters.
So he has on the right here I'm showing a
whole grid of all of the different patterns
with the key of what they represent.
And they can represent places, characters,
elements, actions, affections, or graphic
devices.
So he gives the reader this key of tactile
patterns.
And then he combines them in intricate beautiful
ways.
His first comic in this is called the arctic
circle, and I believe there's one panel that
has a mountain top and on either side there
are these textures of emotions of anxiety
or something.
So you can feel this experience, and I think
there's something beautiful about feeling
an emotion.
So I'm fight excited about these types of
comic, tearing down the idea that comics has
tore illustrations and text.
Comics could be combinations of things that
are interacting with each other.
I had a quote from him that I wanted to share.
And it's very long.
So I will only share part of it.
Let's see.
So the way that he describes his shape reader,
"shape reader exists of a called Tactigrams.
Actions, affections, characters and so on.
For example, a category of shapes is assigned
to affections including-- wait, the category
of shapes assigned to-- joy, fear or sadness
as well as more complex one, such as coercion,
remorse and unease.
Each affection is available in three incremental
intensities.
And this change of magnitude is translated
by the gradual thickening of the shape's core
pattern.
Not only does he have textures but he has
layers of those textures and is able to convey
these beautiful stories through texture alone.
Visually it's stunning as well.
It's a super abstract thing.
It looks like it could be art on the wall.
But it's telling this story.
So I think since I'm running low on time here,
I think, yeah, I can sort of wrap up by saying,
we were talking at the beginning, I talked
about how there are three different types
of relationships in comics, age to image,
age to text, and image to culture.
But as we saw in these tactile examples, image
actually isn't all that important for comics.
If you take out the image, you can substitute
it with texture, substitute it with audio.
You can substitute it with all sorts of things
or not even substitute.
Just create a comic to begin with that doesn't
have images that is just texture or feeling.
So I kind of want to go back to what my professor
or said on the first day of grad school which
I thought was a joke.
Really everything is a comic.
I'm convinced of this.
If you want to talk about it more, I'm happy
to talk about it.
We can get super theoretical.
But everything is a comic which leads me to
think, what is the future of comics is going
to be?
If comics don't have to be text and images
on paper, can we have virtual reality convert
I cans entirely audio comics?
Can we have comics that have multiple layers
of activity to them so you can choose what
level of description you want?
I'm really excited about where this all is
going.
I think, transcripts are a good start to bring
us up to speed on taking the existing visual
content and making them available to everyone.
But I think we can move on from that and do
really cool stuff around tactile comics and
really cool interactive HTML comic.
I'm super excited about the future.
If anyone wants to talk about that more, let
me know.
That's all I've got for you today.
Thank you for having me as the first speaker.
This is really an awesome event.
And I feel really honored to be a part of
ID24.
# ID24.
I am done, Billy.
Wow.
That was awesome.
That is-- I was struggling because I muted
the other two, and I can't figure out how
to unmute it.
Okay.
Way too early for you to be stealing the limelight,
Gregory.
I know.
Sorry about that.
I I'm new.
That was amazing, Cordelia.
Judging by the tweets we've been getting it,
a lot of other people out there enjoy if,
too.
Thank you very much.
There's a lot more that I could talk about
that I wanted to describe.
Like, accessibility-- pretty cool pairing.
That's great.
And I love the idea that you were talking
about tactile comics.
But I think that's a fascinating kind of proposition.
Yes, it's something that I really-- as I mentioned,
I'm a cartoonist.
I never made tactile.
That's something that I really-- I want to
buy a 3D printer and do that.
Get clay and see where it goes.
Yeah.
I think as a blind person myself, one of the
things I struggle with, with tactile diagrams
and pictures is there's so much going only,
so many different textures.
My visual memory of comics, they tend to be
big and bold in the presentation.
Which might lend itself to comics.
[Speakers Overlapping]
No, I think-- like the shape reader I thought
was a really cool concept of layering these
textures on each other I've also-- there's
been a lot of exploration about 3D comics
and taking comics and raising the lines.
But you lose so much by feeling the lines
of that versus feeling something that is maybe
a lot more three dimensional and has these
different textures to it.
Yeah.
Awesome.
So, um, around the audio describe comics,
I think that's fascinating and look forward
to finding more about that as well.
Yeah.
Um, I-- I don't have much to say about it.
But check out comics and power.
They're doing a lot of cool stuff around audio
and comics.
I had a question, Billy before we jump into
the questions.
Does the author need to be doing their own
description or are you fine-- I would think
they would have to, right?
That is something that I've been trying to
figure out myself because I-- so I ran into
an issue when I was transcribing one of my
comics where I drew something that was, it
was a bad drawing.
And so I wasn't conveying visually what I
meant to convey.
Then I was like, in my transcript, do I convey
what I actually meant to conveyor state what
I meant --. and I kind of had this whole debate
of myself about what is the appropriate way
to do this.
And I thought, well maybe it would be good
to have another person transcribe the comic
for me because they can-- they have that objectivity.
They don't know what my initial intent is.
But actually if you read this on transcribing
comics essay Billy, Liana, she goes into that
in depth because as someone transcribing someone
else's comics, she really has to think critically
about, is, you know, again with the idea of
using colors, symbolic colors.
Is it intention article that they use or accidental?
What is the author's intention.
That's something the author only knows.
It's an interesting balance between, do you
want to convey what the reader, what a reader
of the comic would see or what you intended
of the reader of the comic to see.
I don't know if that makes sense.
Cool
We have a couple of questions.
First you're going to check your Twitter and
see it's blown up.
People loved your talk.
We did have one question, asking you what
you thought, uh, about XKCD.
What about XKCD?
I don't know.
Answer the question.
They said, what do you think-- explain XKCD
There's a website that explains XKCD.
I left out a keyword there.
That was my fault.
They asked you what you thought about that
website particularly.
About the explain XKCD website?
I haven't looked at it recently.
Uh, one thing that I think is really interesting
about XKCD and a few other comics like it
is that they make heavy use of the title tag
which is interesting because they kind of
use the title tag as a Easter egg.
And that's kind of interesting from an accessibility
perspective because there were a lot of other
reasons to use and not to use a title tag.
But Easter eggs usually isn't one of them
except in comics.
Okay, so explain XKCD-- I realized they have
a transcript at the end of each explanation.
And that is rad.
Cool.
Be on the XKCD website itself.
Sorry, Leonie
Last time I checked, a friend of mine told
me, but actually if you look at the cold of
the XKCD, there's a description there.
There used to be a long description in there.
For some reason it's not presented in a way
that's actually available on the page itself.
I don't know if that's still the case.
They might have cleaned it up.
It wasn't a code at the long time.
They haven't exposed it.
Interesting.
Yep.
Great.
I think we just-- go ahead.
I think that, XKCD is one of the comics that
is in the oh, know robot transcription engine
I mentioned earlier.
Yeah, that night be it.
That's a good point.
I think we're just wrapping up this session
now or it's coming to an end.
Give us a quick parting shot if people want
to do one thing to make comics more inclusive?
Oh, God.
Digital or tactile?
Any kind.
Digital comics, add a text description of
it anywhere.
If you can add it below the image.
Start small and work up to a larger transcript.
Great.
Once again, Cordelia thank you for this great
talk.
A pleasure listening to you, to kick off ID24
2017.
For everybody else, we'll be taking a ten-minute
break now.
We're gearing up for Eric Bailey who is going
to take to ID24 for the talk of CSS media
queries.
