Guidelines for describing images in the sciences and engineering

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Wednesday, 19 May 2010 15:40pm

The National Centre for Accessible Media (NCAM) in the US has published guidelines for describing images in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) where images are often used to convey important information about these disciplines.

The freely available online guide Effective Practices for Description of Science Content within Digital Talking Books by Bryan Gould, Trisha O'Connell and Geoff Freed is the result of a four-year project that included multiple surveys of people who were either describers or students/scientists who are vision impaired or blind.

There are nine general guidelines for describing STEM images, followed by specific examples and guidelines for bar charts, line graphs, venn diagrams, scatter plots, tables, pie charts, flow charts, math equations, and standard and complex diagrams or illustrations.

NCAM also holds training events, including online webinars on STEM image description and an archived webinar (121.5MB) is also available for immediate download and viewing.

 


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