Historiarum

Joe Clark’s idea to discard the term handicapped (or any other generalized term) in favor of words or phrases that specifically target a person’s disability is really helpful. This allows us to better conceptualize the difficulties people have in accessing web content, and how as designers we can craft sites that are easier to use and understand for people who might be deaf, blind, or have impaired motor skills. (One note: Clark’s reference to the word handicap as evocative of a derogatory image is a little off the mark. See Snopes for the lowdown.) Clark offers some excellent, and realistic, advice, reminding that there are limitations to how accessible a site can be, that some sites will never be usable for portions of the population, and that we live in an imperfect world.

Playing with the screen reader at WebAIM really drove all of this home. Namely, just how important structural design and identifier tags (such as “alt” for images and “title” for links) are for people who use screen readers. Trying to navigate through strangely titled links and repeatedly encountering navigation bars and meaninglessly named image files was an exercise in patience. Thankfully, Mark Pilgrim indicates that using CSS can alleviate many of the architectural problems, so our practice this semester can be reused here using the techniques outlined at WebAIM. I can see how duplicating the main content of a page in a hidden div above all other content makes your site much more agreeable to those using screen readers—having to listen to it read through the header graphics and navigation bar on each and every page was extremely tedious. Finally, adding an accessibility statement to summarize your efforts seems an easy and immensely helpful tool.

What is nice about working toward accessibility for your website, is that it simply pushes you in the direction of better web design. Being conscious of architecture, necessary vs. superfluous content, and additional markup (like alt tags), are hallmarks of good design, but also have the added benefit of making your site useful for a wider population.

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Photoshop is an incredibly powerful program. From creating the illusion of old and worn images to restoring and reconstructing destroyed objects to presenting historical images in a pleasing and consistent fashion, it quickly becomes apparent how with time and effort an old photograph or print can can be remade into a different document

This seems to raise a number of issues for historians who are as interested in context and provenance as they are material, especially when one considers how images can be culturally constructive in both their original and recrafted iterations.

A careful documentation of altered images seems most important, given the way the web works. Since there is a strong possibility someone else might not only find, but republish your image, identifying the original work, as well as the changes you might have made upon it could be very helpful. For example, this image of the Boston Massacre had an incorrect caption the first time I encountered it (the information for which apparently came from here). Now, in this case, an incorrect citation made its way into what is likely becoming the most prevalent singular work cited by students. If one imagines that the original image had been modified in some way, it becomes clear how quickly the disinformation can spiral out of control. Because of this, the responsibility to record one’s transformations and make the process transparent to the audience are ethically important for the historian.

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