Making Accessible Art
Group Information
- Group Members: Joan Huang, Ailiya Zaidi, Cheer Chen, Eva Zhou
- Project Mentor(s): Edwin Corchado
- Acknowledgements: Ikesha Irvin, George Barrios, Veleka Kerr
Main Point of Contact
- Joan Huang & Ailiya Zaidi
Meeting Schedule for the Semester
- Fridays at 12pm with mentors and members
Project Description
The Making Accessible Art Team is creating an online gallery that offers an alternative learning experience for those who are visually impaired by providing a way of “seeing” art through voice and text, led by audio descriptions and conversations.
The Making Accessible Art Team’s project goal is to create an accessible online gallery to showcase some of the artwork made by artists from the Brooklyn Day Habilitation Center. The center has an existing in person showcase of the artist’s artwork open to the public however we wanted to work with the artists to create a space for those who are unable to experience the exhibit fully. We wanted to create an accessible platform that would provide people with visual impairments a way of “seeing” the artwork through voice and text, led by audio descriptions and conversations. In addition to this, the team wanted to allow people to get to know the artists from the Brooklyn Day Habilitation Center better through video interviews. Through the video interviews, visitors can get a better idea of who the artist is and what they wanted to achieve through their artwork. We hope that the center continues to add to the website after our course so that future artists can also contribute to an accessible platform for their artwork.
Overview of Significant Achievement
Our team had many accomplishments and major checkpoints throughout the semester. To begin, our first meeting with our mentor was insightful and gave us an idea of the approach we wanted to take on this meeting. We held a Zoom meeting with our mentor Edwin on February 18th and he walked us through HeartShare’s goals and their art gallery. We were excited to see that the artists already had a place to share their work and had decided that we would aim to make this existing environment an accessible one. Our next Zoom meeting, on February 25th, consisted of a group conversation of what the website would aim to do and how we could get there. Next, on May 4th, the team members met with some of the artists at HeartShare and were able to conduct individual video interviews with them. This was overwhelmingly helpful as we now had a much better understanding of what the artists wanted to achieve in their art and how we could help them reach a larger audience. On March 24th, we decided to edit the interviews and include captions in them for website visitors who had hearing impairments. On April 6th, we then published a comprehensive website on WordPress that included the interviews and some of the artwork from the artists. On April 20th, we added alt text to the artwork that was on the website already and made individual art pages for each artist. On April 28th, we then added text descriptions and audio description to the artwork that is on the website. Finally, on April 30th, we made our final touches on the website. We hope that our project was able to provide a more accessible platform for those who are unable to visit HeartShare in person gallery through our website.