Alt-text as Poetry with Bojana Coklyat and Finnegan Shannon

Thursday, November 16 at 7PM
in-person @ St. Mark’s Church, 131 E. 10th Street,
New York, NY 1003

A banner with a beige background and thin black-line frame; off-right are two irregular half circles drawn in charcoal, extending to the top edge and bottom edge of the banner and almost meeting each other in the center but not quite. To the center-right of the frame are three dashed charcoal lines in a row, beginning at the center-right edge of the banner and extending to almost in between the two half-circles but not quite.

MASKS ARE REQUIRED TO ATTEND THIS WORKSHOP

Alt-text is an essential part of web accessibility. Alt-text, a short description of an image or gif, is a way of making visual content accessible to blind and low-vision people using screen readers. Alt-text is often disregarded altogether or understood through the lens of compliance, as an unwelcome burden to be met with minimum effort. How can we instead approach alt-text thoughtfully and creatively, while still prioritizing alt-text as an accessibility practice?

This Alt-text as Poetry Workshop, led by the artists Bojana Coklyat and Finnegan Shannon, will start with a 30-minute presentation. Bojana and Finnegan will give some context for the workshop, talk about alt-text as poetry, and share some examples of poetic and creative approaches to alt-text. Next, participants will do two writing exercises to practice describing. For both exercises, participants have the option to work with an image or a sound. For the first one, Bojana and Finnegan will provide an image and sound. For the second exercise, participants will work with an image or sound of their choosing (more about that below). The workshop will do the first exercise all together. For the second, participants will work in small groups.

Bojana Coklyat is a disabled artist, 2019-2020 J. William Fulbright alumni and previous project leader at the NYC Museum Arts and Culture Access Consortium (MAC). In 2019, she curated Crip Imponderabilia, the first gallery exhibit at NYU centering all disabled artists and disability culture. Around this time, she began collaborating with Finnegan Shannon on the Alt-Text as Poetry project. This has included facilitating workshops at Twitter, Google and MIT. Recently, Bojana has taken on the position of associate producer on a film funded by the American Foundation for the Blind, featuring a variety of different people in the blind community. Bojana is also currently teaching a course on access and design at Parson’s School of Design at The New School.

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Bojana, a smiling white woman in her 40’s, holding a fresh, hot, cup of coffee – as if to say, come join me for a chat. Her blonde hair is pulled back into a pony tail. Her bangs are swept to the left side, and she is wearing a soft, cream colored, button down shirt

Finnegan Shannon (b. 1989, Berkeley, CA) is an artist experimenting with forms of access. They intervene in ableist structures with humor, earnestness, and rage. Some of their recent work includes Anti-Stairs Club Lounge, an ongoing project that gathers people together who share an aversion to stairs; Alt Text as Poetry, a collaboration with Bojana Coklyat that explores the expressive potential of image description; and Do You Want Us Here or Not, a series of benches and cushions designed for exhibition spaces. Their work has been supported by a Wynn Newhouse Award, an Eyebeam fellowship, and grants from Art Matters Foundation, Canada Council for the Arts, and the Disability Visibility Project.

St. Mark’s Church is wheelchair accessible. The Poetry Project will arrange for an ASL interpreter for any event with one week’s advance notice. Please call The Poetry Project at 212-674-0910 in advance of events to arrange accessibility.

Please note on Fridays between 8-9:30pm the wheelchair accessible all gender bathrooms on the ground floor are unavailable because another arts project has performances in the sanctuary. There are all gender bathrooms on the second floor of the church. To access Parish Hall, attendees must pass through the main sanctuary and a corridor. There are 2 sets of double doors and two single doors to go through. The smallest of these doors at the end of the corridor is 28.5 inches wide.

A .gif with a beige background and thin black-line frame and sans serif font centered at the top that reads “The Poetry Project” and sans serif font centered at the bottom that reads “Fall 2023”. In between the text is an animation of line drawings of two hands approaching one another from either side of the frame, making contact in the center, then passing through. They then return from the opposite side, pass through, and move to their original place. The animation loops.