InBrief230421

Innovations in Accessible Comics for Blind and Low Vision Readers! Expert panelists and participants weigh in on new projects with five international teams, as Illi and Rae reveal how we made our prize-winning queer webcomic #SeeingInBetween. Free registration is open now. Gain access to early prototypes and hear from experts like Thomas Reid, Walei Sabry, Silvana Rainey and Joshua Miele. Event starts at 10am PT (19:00 CET). Hope you can tune in! Listen, view and read the full comic.
Invitation flier for the event, in the style of a three panel comic. The text reads: 
The Program in Visual Impairments, Comic Studies & The Longmore Institute on Disability Present, Innovations in Accessible Comics for Blind and Low Vision Readers!
Highlighted in yellow: rae and illi talk shop on their comic, 10 am PT  (19:00 Uhr CET)
A jagged circle reads "Zoom Event! Friday May 5, 2023, 10am to 1:30pm." 
registration link: https://tinyurl.com/InnovationsInComics 
Get exclusive access to the projects of the Accessible Comics Collective design competition as they receive feedback from comics/access experts... and YOU!"  AD/ASL/CART provided. For other requests: beitiks@sfsu.edu. Supported by the College of Liberal and Creative Arts.
Drawings of Avatars of Rae and Illi are overlaid at bottom. Rae, on the right, is white and wears an eyepatch, pink headphones, a white shirt, yellow pants and blue shoes. Illi, on the left, is white and wears glasses, blue headphones, a yellow shirt, white skirt and pink boots. They are waving to each other and you!

Virtual US Tour 2022: Pronouns like xier

Background of the Tour

Digital Fineliner-Drawing, black on white with a little color. Framed title: Virtual US Lecture Tour. Illi with a pink tank-top, short hair and grey rimmed glasses stands in front of a laptop. In the back a map of the USA. Below the hashtag #PronomenWieXier. My virtual US lecture tour started in April 2022, in German and/or English depending on the audience. I am invited to talk about #PronomenWieXier in different institutions of higher education in the US. I will speak about #PronomenWieXier, German as a highly gendered languagen and languange change. Continue reading

Making visual comics screen-readable with transcriptions (CIB21 Satellite)

Introduction

Fellow comic artists, let’s transcribe our comics together! On the Friday before the comics festival “Comic Invasion Berlin“, in the accompanying program, CIB21 Satellites, I offer an online workshop for fellow comic artists who want to collaborate on creating text-only versions of their online comics to make them more accessible. Screen-readable text-only versions accompany visual versions of my comics to make them accessibly to comics for blind people and everybody else that uses screen-readers to surf the web. This workshop especially invites artists of comics communicating activism from and for marginalized communities. As a queer and non-binary trans comic artist, communication is very close to my heart.

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Transcribing Screenreadable Comics

Introduction

I want my comics to be accessible not only visually, but also tactile and acoustic. Therefore I need a transcription into pure text. Visual elements of the comics have to be described and the pixelated text from the comics image file is typed out. This text is machine-readable. Readers can access it with text-to-speech systems and braille display.

Wanting to make make my comics accessible beyond the visual has a lot to do with my own audience. I wrote about this in my first blog post on screenreadable comics, which includes a list of all the comics already transcribed.

The first workshop “Transcribing Screenreadable Comics” was offered to comic artists in September 2020. The workshop covered three objectives of transcribing comics. Firstly, the comic should gain accessibility for more readers. Secondly, the transcription enables text search and googleability. Thirdly, making comic transcriptions can be a tool of analyzing and getting to know ones own work.

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Workshop : Nonbinary Gender Label Biographies Bern

I will participate a the Trans Congress in Bern with a workshop. On Sunday, the 8th of September at 3pm I will facilitate a workshop on sharing our experiences with gender labels. Choosing labels is often not easy for trans people that are not binary trans.

Nonbinary Gender Label Biographies

Finding gender labels that fit and dealing with wrong gender labels is especially hard for nonbinary trans people. This workshop is for all people on the trans spectrum that are not (only) trans men and trans women. You may call yourself nonbinary or not.

The workshop will provide a space for each to talk about how our gender labels changed and provide the opportunity to listen to each other. Finding gender labels that fits is not straight forward, but there is happiness in being seen and understood. The workshop will be held in English and the gender labels may be in any language.

Overview over all workshops.

Workshop : Challenging relationships

Sunday, 11.4.09, Jacky and me will give a Workshop in Vienna at Autonom-Feministischen Frauen-Lesben-Treffen. Here a short summary:

Challenging relationships

Which concepts, promises, beliefs and images are associated with a non-monogamous lifestyle? What role do these images play in my relationship practice and how do they affect relationship dynamics?

This workshop is for women who are in one, none or many relationships and who wish to challenge relationship norms with us.

Workshop : One, many none

Workshop about relationships together with Antidote at Ladyfest Viena 2007.

You are angry about the prejudices and norms attached to being or not being in a relationship. Your partner loves somebody else, but the love between you and hir is not over. You wonder how this is going to work out. You have more than one relationship or would like to and want to talk to others about multiple relationships and polyamory. You are polyamorous, you do not have a relationship right now and you wonder how to tell new romantic interests, that you can imagine having more than one girlfriend/…/boyfriend. You don’t recognise yourself in the available catalogue of possible relationship types. Friends, lovers, love of one’s live, family, sex buddies are not sufficient to describe your wishes and feelings for others. What different types of contact to others are possible? Do you have everyday experiences to recount? What about time management, compersion, jealousy, compulsive coupledom, the faithfulness principle and the monogamy commandment? This won’t be a lecture. We want to provide space to discuss wishes, real life stories, alternative relationship forms and more.