Library Access Framework - Accessibility RA 2025

The ECU Library + Archives have a collection of over 500 prints that have been digitized in our institutional repository, eCollections. The Library + Archives began a project in 2023 in collaboration with a print making instructor, Beth Howe to work on improving access to the collection. One aspect of this project was to add creative access descriptions to each print, which was inspired and informed by the work done at the Grunt Gallery Archive. Creative Access Descriptions are similar to alt-text in that they provide a textual description of visual images for users with perceptual disabilities, but the aim is to be subjective and to be creative in the descriptions. Writing creative access descriptions is a creative process and improves accessibility to collections by adding search terms that would not normally be captured in standardized metadata.

During the research assistantship, Parnian worked on adding creative access descriptions to the prints. This work is still in progress, but you can find the collection at the link below.