accessibility...

[ratcreature]

So I've seen Missed the Saturday Dance by zoetrope recced several times on my f-list, and I get why people like the multimedia, and it's kind of cool and what not, and I like a mix of images and text (or I wouldn't love comics) and the video and sound is neat too. And I love AUs anyway. However, that choice to display much of the story text that is letters as graphics may be visually cool, but it really grates on me that the images don't come with an alt-attribute or a link to a text version of the letters.

I get that full transcriptions of video, sound, and image parts in a multimedia story for accessibility are not very practical, and it's not like I expect fanfic to go that far, but those letters are already text. And text that is an integral part of the narrative too. And it's just too small to read comfortably for me on a screen, especially with the typewriter effect, and I'm not even visually impaired or anything. Some stories displaying letters like that provide accessible alternatives, sheafrotherdon for example did in one of her Farm in Iowa stories, and I very much liked that, since I could take a look at the visual of the letter, then read the text in a comfortable font at a comfortable size.

With as much work as went into the presentation Missed the Saturday Dance, and I agree that it looks very nice indeed, how difficult could it have been to provide a link to a transcribed text of the all those letters as well, and make it possible for more people to enjoy it?

Comments

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I had the same problems - the story tied me to my computer without *any* clue as to how long I'd be so tied. I also wasn't fond of needing to be told *how* to access the story.

And they got a major historical fact wrong, and that just tossed me out of the story - the USAF didn't officially exist as an independent entity until 1947. Until then, it was the Army Air Corp, and occasionally, the Army Air Force (we have a picture of my father-in-law, then a corporal, with his unit, the 11th Army Air Force Band.)

I got back in, and I thought it was a good story, except that I'm still not sure what the audio files added to the story and the text portions would have worked as well as, well, text. And I'm not rushing to read it again.

[thepouncer.livejournal.com]

Echoing the distaste at not knowing how long the story is, and at the small size of the images with text and no alternative, but also, I'm so glad to know I'm not the only one thrown by the use of Air Force. I tried to fanwank that it really meant the Royal Air Force, but it quickly became apparent that that wouldn't fly either. I was tired last night, and stopped reading with the intention to go back someday, but it won't be today or probably any time within the week.

[ratcreature]

It is a bit dissonant that for some aspects so much effort went into it, kind of for lots of "bells and whistles" stuff, but for some more basic aspects, like basic accessibility for the core story on the formalist design side and basic facts on the storytelling side, less care was taken. It's kind of backwards, isn't it?

[thepouncer.livejournal.com]

I was shocked that such a basic fact wouldn't have been caught in beta. Or that there apparently wasn't enough research done to inform the writing on that particular point. It does seem odd to me, that so much care went into the graphics and presentation while the content languished. Of course, I haven't finished the story yet, so perhaps my opinion will change, but so far I'm not wowed.

[ratcreature]

I enjoyed the audio and video for setting the atmosphere, though I'm not sure how much they tied into anything later.