Ramblings on Librarianship, Technology, and Academia

A while back, I made an inappropriate snarky comment about the lack of transcript/alt text on a web comic. Instead of returning snark for snark, the comic's creator has gone out of her way to jump through all the hoops WordPress puts between a blogger and accessibility. Folks, check out Derangement and Description, Rebecca Goldman's very funny (if you are in archives or libraries) web comic, now with alternative text.

And I wish I could start a meme: pick one web comic, image tumblr, etc, you read which doesn't provide transcripts. Politely (unlike me!), directly approach the artist and ask them if they would be willing to start providing alternative text, descriptive text, or transcripts.

(I decided to do this myself just now, since my first attempt was snarky and therefore doesn't follow the rules of my meme, and discovered 2 things:

1. XKCD has transcripts already, but
2. they are hidden from screenreaders because the code that keeps them off the visible screen is the CSS "display: none" which is respected by most screen readers.

Randall probably doesn't even know that there are ways to hide information from the visual screen while not hiding from screenreaders. Therefore, my point one for my meme is to write to Randall and tell him about the CSS he needs. \o/)