Making Accessible Comics by Max Barnewitz
Comics have long been a medium for telling stories that often go untold including stories about queer, disabled, and BIPOC experiences. Although there are many examples of superheroes with disabilities (think Daredevil or Professor X), characters with disabilities are often portrayed as villains (1). Being conscious of the impact of representation is important for making great comics; but what if your comics aren’t even accessible to audiences?
Missing out on comics as an entire medium leaves a wide gap in terms of representation and inclusion. When people with disabilities are left out of comics, stories about people with disabilities can end up perpetuating harmful stereotypes.
[Image Description: A group of anthropomorphic animals gather together around a spikey text bubble that says “Nothing About Us Without Us!” There is a bear using a wheelchair and wearing a red shirt and blue pants. He is next to an orange cat with a white cane. Across from them is a spotted dog in a yellow shirt holding a book that says “Comics for All” in red letters.”]
Improving accessibility will not only help you increase your readership as comics artists, it will help make the comics field more inclusive, and the ways we tell stories with comics can become more expansive. Here are a few ways you can get started:
ALT Text & Transcripts: If you’re putting your comic online, be sure to give every image a description using the ALT text function. The purpose of ALT text is to succinctly describe essential information from an image on a webpage. This allows a screenreader to quickly navigate the page and identify what is important to the reader. If your comic is longer, consider creating a transcript that’s readable via screenreader so that blind and low-vision audiences can enjoy your whole story (2,3). When writing out a transcript, include what’s important in your comic story, as well as color scheme, panel layouts, and key character descriptions.
Adapting Comics: If you’re adapting a print comic for blind and visually impaired readers, consider ways of making the text both physically engaging and culturally appropriate. This can be anything from increasing font size to thinking outside traditional comics formats. For example, check out Shapereader’s “tactigrams” comic (4) or Phillip Meyer’s braille comic Life (5). See Nick Sousanis’s blog (6) on accessible comics for more examples!
High Contrast: When adding color to your comics, remember that higher contrast can improve readability as well. You can also consider the format of your comic to make physical engagement with the comic easier.
Content Consultants: If there is a particular audience that you’d like to reach, you might also want to hire a content consultant to ensure your work is reaching your desired audience through authentic and informed representation.
Electric Squeak is dedicated to making comics more accessible - and creating a platform for comics enthusiasts and creators from CCA and beyond to enjoy comics together! This year Electric Squeak’s editorial team made sure to implement ALT text and transcripts for Issue #2, and we’ll continue to look for ways to make comics more accessible.
(1) https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/keah-brown-superhero-issue
(2) https://axesslab.com/accessible-comics/
(3) https://lastcallmedia.com/blog/accessible-comics
(4) https://www.thecut.com/2016/08/a-new-language-could-help-bring-comic-books-to-the-blind.html