Operationalizing Image Accessibility Across Platforms, Providers, and Publishers

Digital accessibility is mission-critical for scholarly publishing. While publishers have made progress with born-accessible workflows, many still struggle with adding alternative text (alt text) for images--a fundamental requirement of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) for over 20 years. We continue to add undescribed images to digital publications and online libraries, widening the visual gap for blind and visually impaired people and for search engines that cannot "see" images. Missing alt text is also a critical fault for digital cataloging, creating a massive database of disorganized, visually inaccessible content. How do we operationalize this in a sustainable way? With a growing number of vendor solutions, what should publishers outsource, and what should they develop in-house? What is reasonable to expect from authors, and what should be handled by publishers? What is needed to integrate authoritative, descriptive metadata into content production lifecycles so that visual media are fully contextualized and explained to visually impaired people? || Learning Level: Mixed-Learning || Speakers: Caroline Desrosiers; Hannah Heckner; Michelle Urberg; Lettie Conrad