How can poetry make art more accessible? Find out during this creative writing program all about alt text.
Alt text is a short written description of an online image. Though intended for use by blind and low-vision users, it can be enjoyed by anyone. With the help of a screen reader, which identifies images on a web page and reads any accompanying alt text aloud, blind and low-vision users can gain important information about the visual content of a web page they may not otherwise be able to access.
The style in which alt text is written can greatly shape the way an image is experienced, particularly when the image is a work of art. Whether on an art museum’s website or a personal social media account, this often overlooked form of writing is both an important accessibility tool and an opportunity to be thoughtful and creative in how we describe the visual world.
Join museum educator Arianne Nguyen in the Art Institute’s Ryerson and Burnham Libraries to learn, write, and workshop alt texts for artworks together. Inspired by the Alt Text as Poetry project by artists Bojana Coklyat and Shannon Finnegan, the program will offer writing prompts using ideas from the world of poetry to inspire evocative image descriptions of works from the museum’s collection currently on view in the library’s reading room. Together we’ll explore these artworks, learn about accessible and poetic image description efforts at the museum, and write alt texts of our own, experimenting with caring, creative, inclusive, and playful ways to describe art. At the end of the program, writers will have the opportunity to share their alt texts for possible inclusion on the museum’s website.
What to Expect
Writing in the Galleries: Alt Text as Poetry will take place in the museum’s library, located to the right of the Woman’s Board Grand Staircase as you enter the museum from Michigan Avenue.
Many tables and chairs are available in the reading room, and participants will be seated for most of the program. There will be time to move around the room to look at artworks on the walls and to share your writing with other participants. The works we will look at are hung high on the walls, above bookshelves, and printed copies will be available at the tables for those who prefer to use them.
About the Facilitator
Arianne Nguyen is a McMullan fellow in Gallery Activation. At the Art Institute of Chicago, she tells stories, joins conversations, and facilitates learning in the galleries. Outside the museum, she is a Chicagoan, an oral historian, and a writer of image descriptions for digital artists.
