An Editor Who Makes Times Visuals Accessible to All Jaime Tanner, The New York Times's first accessibility visuals editor, wants to remove barriers to make sure readers with disabilities can engage with Times visual journalism.
By Sarah Bahr March 24, 2024, 3:00 a.m. ET When Jaime Tanner joined The New York Times as its first accessibility visuals editor in July 2022, it was also her first time in a newsroom. Ms. Tanner, who has a master's degree in data visualization from the Parsons School of Design, came to The Times from Visa, where she built accessible user interfaces for products and applications. "I tended to overexplain early on," she said of her first few months at The Times. "I would say, 'This is important for this reason and will benefit our audience in this way.'" Ultimately, she found that Times journalists were eager to learn about how they could make articles and visuals accessible to readers with disabilities. (At least one in four adults in the United States live with at least one disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) One accessibility feature that readers can find in online articles is alt text: descriptions of images that can be read aloud or presented as Braille by assistive technologies. Alt text is critical for people who are blind or have low vision. Soon after joining The Times, Ms. Tanner worked with the Newsroom Development and Support team to improve upon and expand the availability of alt text on photos, graphics and illustrations. Accessibility, Ms. Tanner said, is about "identifying and removing barriers to make sure everyone can engage with our stories." In an interview, she reflected on the feedback she had received from readers and her goals for The Times's journalism. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. What were the first steps you took when you arrived at The Times? One was to do accessibility reviews of stories: I read articles, gave feedback and made changes that improved the experience for readers who use different assistive technologies - software or equipment that help readers with disabilities interact with the web. For example, screen readers read web pages aloud or translate them into Braille. Speech recognition software allows people to interact with a page by voice command. When I review articles, I think about readers who use these technologies and whether they can access and understand the information. How has your work evolved over the past two years? When I started at The Times, I spent a bit more time explaining what accessibility meant. Now, Times journalists ask more specific questions like: "I'm working on this quiz. Does it work with a screen reader?" I can chat with a Graphics editor about how they might address certain issues. I'm grateful to see people developing new components of their work with accessibility in mind. Day to day, I work on accessibility edits on articles, help make changes to our platforms and discuss best practices and reader feedback with teams. Looking ahead, I'm thinking more about overall systems versus individual stories. For example, how can I support our Graphics editors so they can identify barriers and incorporate accessibility measures using our publishing tools? What feedback have you received from readers? The Times worked with the American Council of the Blind to put together focus groups and surveys, which involved reviewing examples of alt text from articles we have published. There was a lot of feedback about how much extra detail we were including; readers wanted it short and sweet. On the other hand, they were telling us that the alt text we'd written for graphics - specifically maps - was often too simple. So now when we write alt text for graphics, we try to really hone in on all the vital information that's there. That's challenging for more complex displays like weather graphics, which are constantly changing. Is there a project you are particularly proud of? After earthquakes struck Turkey and Syria in February 2023, The Times published an interactive piece that showed a historic Turkish street before and after the earthquakes. As you scroll through the article, you can see the demolished street with overlays of buildings that used to be there, alongside text and more photos describing the scene. There's so much going on in the article - so many layers of information, more images than text - and the reporters did a tremendous job describing that experience in alt text. I shared it with a colleague from a different news organization who's blind; he said it had a wonderful dynamism he hadn't experienced in a story before. It was awesome to know that, even for these complex stories, we're able to do the work to make sure all readers can access the information and feel immersed in the storytelling. Anything else you want to add? People often think that my work with our visual teams focuses only on people with visual disabilities, but it also includes people with auditory, cognitive, physical and speech disabilities. Visual journalists at The Times are always experimenting with new ways to tell stories, and we want to be sure that we consider the ways disabled readers will experience that work. I want our stories to be accessible to everyone. Sarah Bahr is a senior staff editor at The Times. She has reported on a range of topics, most often theater, film and television, while writing for the Culture, Styles and National desks. A version of this article appears in print on March 24, 2024, Section A, Page 2 of the New York edition with the headline: Making Times Visuals Accessible to All Readers. 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