Kress grant funds University of Michigan for Workshop on Guidelines for Describing Arts and Humanities Visual Resources
The University of Michigan Library and Press have received $10,000 from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation to fund a workshop in fall 2016 focused on the development of guidelines for describing visual resources within digital publications.
Textual description of visual resources is a requirement for accessible digital publications and fundamental to the discoverability and sustainability of visual content in the digital publishing ecosystem.
The workshop will bring together professionals from the fields of art and art history, disability studies and accessibility, academic and museum publishing, and libraries, museums, and archives for a day-and-a-half workshop. Stakeholders, including partners from Benetech, a nonprofit addressing barriers to global literacy, will convene to develop guidelines that align with existing standards for metadata, arts description, and accessibility.
The Kress Foundation has provided support for the workshop in the form of $500 travel stipends for 20 invited participants. The workshop will take place in fall 2016 at U-M Ann Arbor and will be led by Stephanie Rosen, project PI and U-M Library Accessibility Specialist, and Charles Watkinson, Director of U-M Press and Associate University Librarian for Publishing.
Working closely with colleagues in the Library, staff of the Press have learned that the lack of shared best practices for describing arts and humanities visual resources is a serious obstacle to publications that are accessible for people with disabilities that affect reading. Through this workshop, U-M will advance the broader accessible publishing movement by fostering alignment and commitment among a multidisciplinary cohort of experts.
See the project website for more information about the workshop.
