6 Ways to Make Visual and Creative Media More Accessible

A student opens the image for tomorrow's critique. The assignment asks her to analyze composition, contrast, and scale, but the image description says only, "abstract painting." She knows what she's supposed to analyze. She just doesn't have access to the details that make the analysis possible.

Fixing that barrier matters. But even when an image, video, performance, or demonstration is technically accessible, students may still struggle actually using the content to notice what's important, follow the creative process, or understand what they need to do. Making creative media technically accessible matters. So does making it usable so students can meet your learning goal.

That's where purpose becomes important. Fine arts courses ask students to learn through looking, listening, making, performing, and responding - experiences that are often central to the discipline. Before changing those experiences, ask: What are students supposed to perceive, interpret, create, or communicate? What challenge is essential to that work?

Then consider where different learners might get stuck. The goal isn't to remove the sensory, creative, or experiential challenge. It's to reduce barriers that aren't essential to learning.

1. Describe What Students Need to Notice

"A painting of three people" may technically identify an image, but it doesn't provide much to work with if students are asked to analyze composition, technique, scale, symbolism, or visual relationships.

Start with the assignment: What do students need to notice to do the interpretation themselves?

• Use brief alternative text when identifying the work is sufficient.

• Provide a longer description when students need significant visual detail.

• Describe relevant composition, placement, scale, color, texture, contrast, or technique.

• Separate observation from interpretation.

For example: If students are analyzing composition and visual relationships in Edward Hopper's Nighthawks (1942), a description might read:

“Four people occupy a brightly lit diner at night. Three customers sit along a curved counter while a worker stands behind it. Large glass windows reveal the interior from the dark, nearly empty street outside. The diner extends diagonally across the painting, with its illuminated windows occupying much of the foreground.”

The description gives students visual details to examine without interpreting the artwork for them.

2. Narrate the Creative Process, Not Just the Steps

Watching someone throw clay, mix paint, position a camera, shape a musical phrase, or demonstrate movement can communicate things that are difficult to capture in written instructions alone.

But a demonstration can be perfectly visible and audible, while important ‘expert thinking’ and other details remain hidden inside phrases such as "watch what I'm doing" or "you want it to look like this." Consider techniques that support learner usability alongside the technically accessible content.  

• Narrate significant movements, choices, adjustments, and changes.

• Explain what you're looking, listening, or feeling for as you make a decision.

• Pair demonstrations with instructions or reference materials that students can revisit.

Describing the process doesn't replace the demonstration. It makes the expert's thinking inside it more visible.

See it in practice: Artist Kelly Wang discusses materials, techniques, and tools, with footage of her studio demonstrations. How might narrating your creative decisions help students understand not just what you're doing, but why? Note: Captions are auto-generated.

3. Give Performances More Than One Way to Be Studied

Music, theater, dance, film, and other time-based work may combine dialogue, sound, movement, gesture, staging, costume, lighting, and spatial relationships. Captions provide access to speech; however, they don't necessarily capture everything students need for the learning activity.

• Describe significant movement, staging, gesture, or other visual information when it affects meaning.

• Provide transcripts for spoken or audio content.

• Use scores, scripts, lyrics, program notes, storyboards, or other supporting materials when they offer another useful route into the work.

If students are studying staging, they need access to staging. If they're analyzing rhythm, they need access to the relevant musical information. The support should follow the purpose.

See it in practice: Candoco Dance Company provides an audio-described performance, transcripts, a visual guide, and an interview with the creative cast. Which of these resources might help students notice, revisit, or analyze aspects of a performance they would otherwise miss?

4. Let Color Create Meaning, Not Gatekeep It

Color may be the content in fine arts. Students may be studying hue, value, contrast, palette, lighting, or the meanings attached to color. So the guidance, "don't rely on color," is too simplistic here. Instead, distinguish between color as something students are studying and color as the only way unrelated information is communicated.

• Use sufficient contrast for instructional text, labels, and functional information.

• When color identifies categories, steps, materials, or instructions, pair it with another cue.

• When color itself is the subject of study, provide another way to access relevant relationships when needed.

Accessibility doesn't mean taking color out of art. It means being intentional about what color is being asked to do.

See it in practice: Explore the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago's Color for All to consider how differences in color perception can shape the experience of artwork. How might you help students examine color relationships without assuming everyone perceives them in the same way?

5. Slow Critique Down Enough for Thinking

A critique may have no obvious technical accessibility problem and still create a barrier when it comes to students’ ability to use that content to meet the learning goal. Students may be asked to observe a work, develop an interpretation, connect it to disciplinary language, or respond publicly within seconds. Speed can become an unintended requirement.

• Share critique questions or criteria before discussion when possible.

• Give students time to observe, listen, annotate, sketch, or write before responding.

• Offer a written or annotated way to contribute alongside live critique.

Try this: Give students two minutes to record one thing they notice, one interpretation they're considering, and one question they want to ask the artist. How might this brief pause change the quality of observations and contributions during critique?

6. Teach Students to Create Accessibly, Too

Students aren't only consuming creative media. They're making it.

Portfolios, videos, performances, posters, exhibitions, presentations, websites, and other creative projects offer an opportunity to make accessibility and usability part of the creative process, rather than something added after the work is complete.

• Introduce relevant accessibility expectations when you introduce the assignment.

• Show examples of accessible creative work and discuss the choices behind them.

• Ask students to consider who can perceive, navigate, or participate in what they're creating, which supports the usability of that content to achieve desired learning. 

• Include accessibility in the rubric when it is an expected part of the work.

Consider this: When students create a portfolio, video, performance, or exhibition, how might accessibility become part of their creative decisions about audience, medium, and presentation rather than a correction made afterward?

Try One Purposeful Change

Choose one place where students look, listen, make, perform, or respond. Ask: What are students supposed to perceive, interpret, create, or communicate? What challenge should remain? Where might different learners be getting stuck?

Then try one manageable change while preserving the creative or disciplinary work. Look for one reasonable sign that it helped: more specific observations during critique; fewer procedural questions during demonstrations; stronger explanations of creative choices; broader participation or student feedback. Use what you notice to decide what to keep, adjust, or try next.

Keep Exploring

Find step-by-step guidance and additional resources for creating accessible course content on the Digital Accessibility website.

We'll work through strategies like these at Amplify Access to Creative Learning: Designing Accessible Fine Arts Experiences on October 21. Bring an image, demonstration, performance, creative assignment, or critique activity from your course.

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