IAP Session: Alt-Text Time

Bojana Coklyat and Shannon Finnegan will lead a group work session to dig into our collective backlog of alt-text writing for websites or social media. We can share what we’re working on, ask questions, and learn from each other.

If you are brand new to writing alt-text, we recommend reading Section 2 of Bojana and Shannon’s workbook Alt-Text as Poetry in preparation for this event. It includes some basic information about alt-text and how to write it.

This event was first developed with artist Aislinn Thomas for Critical Distance Centre for Curators’s event series Public Displays of Affection in fall 2020. 

This online program will use Zoom. Please email eagarner [at] mit.edu (eagarner[at]mit[dot]edu) to request live closed-captioning.
This event is free and open to the MIT Community. 

Participation in Alt-Text as Poetry workshop is not required, but encouraged. For more information, contact Emily Garner eagarner [at] mit.edu (eagarner[at]mit[dot]edu).

About the Artists

Bojana Coklyat is a disabled visual artist, activist and art access consultant. Her interest in creative forms of access led her to Alt-Text as Poetry, a collaboration with Shannon Finnegan. Coklyat researched access in cultural institutions as part of her 2019-2020 Fulbright grant in the Czech Republic. She has continued similar work as the Project Leader for the Mapping Virtual Access in Cultural Institutions project at the Museum Art and Culture Access Consortium (MAC).Over the past several months, on behalf of MAC, Coklyat has been documenting approaches to access in NYC area cultural institutions during the pandemic.

Shannon Finnegan is an interdisciplinary artist. Some of their recent work includes Anti-Stairs Club Lounge, an ongoing project that gathers people together who share an aversion to stairs; Alt-Text as Poetry, a collaboration with Bojana Coklyat that explores the expressive potential of alt-text; and Do You Want Us Here or Not, a series of benches designed for exhibition spaces. Their work has been supported by a 2018 Wynn Newhouse Award, a 2019 residency at Eyebeam, and a 2020 grant from Art Matters Foundation.