Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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Transcribing a Webcomic (self.Blind)
submitted by saxitlurg
Hey, I'm a web comic artist trying to make my work more accessible to blind and visually impaired readers. It's a continuing story, not a gag a week comic, so I want to provide a smooth, immersive experience for everyone.There's not really a set standard to follow, so there's several options I've seen people use. The three options I'm considering are:
1. Writing everything out beat by beat, describing everything in each picture, trying to faithfully reproduce the comic in written text for a screen reader to read. (Honestly I'm the least thrilled with this one, because it seems clunky and not very immersive to listen to a story that way)
2. Make an audio file for each page where I tell the story like a radio drama or an audio book, and release each audio file section with the page it's describing
3. Just write out the whole story in prose like a book in a single file or webpage that I update with the comic's progress, so it's not broken up by being bound to a page-by-page format.
I'm sighted, so I don't know enough to tell which way might be the easiest for the largest majority of people. I would hate to take a guess and be wrong, and end up making people's reading experience more frustrating. So if anyone has opinions or suggestions (even if it's something wildly different from these three ideas), I'd be happy to hear it!
Thank you!
EDIT:
Thank you to the people who responded! I decided to go with audio transcripts. Here's a playlist of the first eleven pages of the in-progress Chapter 2 for anyone who's interested. (Don't worry about continuity, each chapter is somewhat self-contained)
$1
I'll go back and create files for chapter one a bit later.
1. Writing everything out beat by beat, describing everything in each picture, trying to faithfully reproduce the comic in written text for a screen reader to read. (Honestly I'm the least thrilled with this one, because it seems clunky and not very immersive to listen to a story that way)
2. Make an audio file for each page where I tell the story like a radio drama or an audio book, and release each audio file section with the page it's describing
3. Just write out the whole story in prose like a book in a single file or webpage that I update with the comic's progress, so it's not broken up by being bound to a page-by-page format.
I'm sighted, so I don't know enough to tell which way might be the easiest for the largest majority of people. I would hate to take a guess and be wrong, and end up making people's reading experience more frustrating. So if anyone has opinions or suggestions (even if it's something wildly different from these three ideas), I'd be happy to hear it!
Thank you!
EDIT:
Thank you to the people who responded! I decided to go with audio transcripts. Here's a playlist of the first eleven pages of the in-progress Chapter 2 for anyone who's interested. (Don't worry about continuity, each chapter is somewhat self-contained)
$1
I'll go back and create files for chapter one a bit later.
TheFake_VIP_yt 3 points 3y ago
Honestly, I love all these ideas. I think if I had to pick, I'd opt for an updated, single page, with headings for each new commic, but that has its flaws too (mainly, it's hard to tell if the page has been updated. Still, Ithink this is the most balanced option (I think making an audiofile would be a lot of work that, if you want to put in, maybe create essentially a podcast out of it, would be great, but is, as I mentioned, a lot of work)
saxitlurg [OP] 2 points 3y ago
Thank you for responding! I think you're right that an updating single page would be a good compromise, but if audio files are the best, most immersive experience, then I will happily put in the work! (You don't make a free-to-read comic if you're not the type of person who's willing to put any amount of work on your shoulders haha)
TheFake_VIP_yt 2 points 3y ago
That is a fair point, yes. If you're willing to do it, I think an audio format would be great, but I think it could be bigger than just the blind community if you did it. I don't read commics myself, but I imagine many people around the world would love to stick that on in the car while they're commuting.
saxitlurg [OP] 2 points 3y ago
That is a good point. I have a friend who is also sighted, but has a lot of problems reading (even comics) So if something is not in an audio format, she basically can't experience it without a mountain of effort, which makes her not want to bother most of the time.
oncenightvaler 2 points 3y ago
I know you already made your choice with your edit but if you had not I recommend you check out the webcomic work of Christopher B Wright, the Help Desk and etc. He had written out transcripts of his comic and he wrote it like a script, I thought that was a neat way of tackling the issue.
saxitlurg [OP] 1 points 3y ago
Oh that is a neat way! Thank you, I'll keep that in mind for the future!
MostlyBlindGamer 2 points 3y ago
I like the style used on $1.
At the same time, the podcast idea would be pretty cool to broaden your audience in general.
At the same time, the podcast idea would be pretty cool to broaden your audience in general.
saxitlurg [OP] 2 points 3y ago
I like that style too, it's very clean and streamlined. But I feel like that stark style suits the tone of XKCD better than my comics. XKCD is is a bunch of stick figures with no faces in empty backgrounds, where 90% of the humor comes from the dialogue, so there's not much to describe. My comics rely on visuals a little more, with backgrounds and facial expressions that help tell the story. I tried straightforwardly describing what happens, and there's just too much to describe, and it ends up losing any emotion in the process. So I'd end up with long dry descriptions before getting to any dialogue, and I felt like that ruins the flow of the story when I read it out loud. (Any transcript I write, I always try to read it out loud to make sure the flow feels right, because that's how it will be experienced by the people using screen readers) And I really want to avoid giving people a worse experience of the story with a tool that's supposed to be making it easier to enjoy. I think the podcast format might be more enjoyable to experience, because it would allow me to use narration to keep up the atmosphere while describing things, and use vocal performance to substitute for facial expression.
MostlyBlindGamer 2 points 3y ago
I see what you mean.
Going with the podcast, you can always add a link to the script to the comic page and shoot two birds with one stone.
Going with the podcast, you can always add a link to the script to the comic page and shoot two birds with one stone.
saxitlurg [OP] 2 points 3y ago
That's true! Also, thank you for giving feedback, I really appreciate it (heart)
MostlyBlindGamer 2 points 3y ago
Sure, good luck and thanks for thinking about your whole audience.
[deleted] 1 points 3y ago
[deleted]
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