Sam to Ellie: I think we’ve been had

From: sam@seesaw.charli.info
To: ellie@seesaw.charli.info
Subject: I think we've been had

Ellie,

I've listened back to the interview.

Twice.

I think we've been had.

Not in a bad way. In a rather magnificent way.

We invited Charlotte Joanne onto the programme to discuss how a blind woman could exercise creative control over seventeen pages of visual storytelling.

She turned up and asked whether we'd enjoyed reading her book.

We tried to explain that it wasn't quite that simple.

She asked why not.

We explained about visual verification, authorship, quality assurance, and the problem of evaluating pictures through machine-generated descriptions.

She asked whether we'd laughed at the battery.

We said yes.

She asked whether we'd understood why the woman left the robot in the boot.

We said yes.

She asked whether we'd liked the ending.

We said yes.

Then she asked what the problem was.

And somehow, Ellie, we were the ones who sounded ridiculous.

I particularly enjoyed the moment you asked whether she was concerned about publishing a comic containing a dog with no legs.

"No," she said.

You asked why not.

"Because it's still a dog."

I nearly died.

Then came the reasonable adjustments business.

"The pictures are reasonable adjustments for sighted readers."

I initially thought she was simply taking the piss. I'm now fairly certain she was, but that's not all she was doing.

She's reversed the assumed direction of accessibility.

For once, the blind woman isn't asking for an accommodation to participate in somebody else's culture.

She's creating the culture and making accommodations for everybody else.

And she isn't apologising for the accommodations being imperfect.

I think there's something rather liberating about that.

But here's what I keep coming back to.

Charlotte doesn't seem particularly interested in proving that blind people can make comics.

She wanted to make a comic.

She worked out how.

She made one.

She wasn't very impressed by the first attempt, so she changed the process.

And now she's thinking about something else.

I find that more interesting than any demonstration of accessible image generation.

We kept trying to turn her into a case study.

She kept insisting on being an author.

I think we should leave most of that in the edit.

Especially the dog.

Sam

P.S. I'm considering asking Charlotte whether she'd like to review our podcast. I'm not sure either of us would survive.

Ellie to Sam: re: I think we’ve been had

From: ellie@seesaw.charli.info
To: sam@seesaw.charli.info
Subject: Re: I think we've been had

Sam,

I'm glad you've listened back.

I've been thinking about it too, and I agree with much of what you say.

But not all of it.

You knew that was coming.

I think Charlotte's reasonable adjustments argument is clever. I also think it's dangerous if we allow the cleverness to do too much work.

I have spent most of my adult life explaining why accessibility isn't a favour.

It's not a charitable gesture. It's not something you provide if you've got a little time and money left over.

And it's certainly not something for which disabled people should be expected to express gratitude regardless of quality.

So when Charlotte says she has made reasonable adjustments for sighted people, I understand the joke.

But if we're going to take the argument seriously, then we have to take all of it seriously.

Including the quality.

A sighted reader might reasonably expect the dog to have legs.

A blind reader might reasonably expect an image description to tell them something that the picture actually contains.

Neither expectation is unreasonable.

And I don't want us suggesting that authorship somehow removes the obligation to care about the reader's experience.

However.

And you may wish to sit down for this.

I think Charlotte has exposed something genuinely uncomfortable in my own thinking.

I accepted that she could write the story.

I accepted that she could script the panels.

I accepted that she could instruct an AI to draw them.

I even accepted that she could evaluate the results through descriptions and independent checking.

But when she told us she wasn't particularly bothered about the appearance of the pictures, I found myself thinking she wasn't taking her work seriously enough.

Why?

I don't ask novelists whether they have personally inspected the typography of every printed edition.

I don't ask radio dramatists whether they've verified the waveform of every sound effect.

I don't expect an author to be equally invested in every aspect of production.

I expect them to care about the work.

Charlotte clearly cares about the story, the characters, the pacing and the experience of reading it.

She just doesn't regard the visual finish as the most important part of that experience.

And I think I had quietly assumed that a graphic novelist must care about visual appearance in precisely the way a sighted graphic novelist might.

Which is a rather sighted assumption for a woman who's been blind for most of her life.

I don't think this means we abandon questions of quality.

I think it means we ask who gets to define it.

Charlotte has made something she wanted to make, using methods she could control, and judged its success against her own priorities.

We are entitled to criticise the result.

We are not entitled to insist she should have wanted to make a different thing.

There is a distinction there that I hadn't properly appreciated before Thursday.

I still want the dog to have legs.

But I'm beginning to suspect that might be my problem rather than Charlotte's.

Ellie

P.S. Please don't tell her I've said any of this. She'll become unbearable.

P.P.S. I think we should invite her back when she's made something else. I have a feeling she will.

Sam to Ellie: the accessibility audit

From: sam@seesaw.charli.info
To: ellie@seesaw.charli.info
Subject: The accessibility audit

Ellie,

I've had an idea.

You aren't going to like it.

I've been thinking about your point that we shouldn't let the reasonable adjustments joke excuse poor quality.

You're right.

There. I've said it.

Please don't frame this email.

But I've also been thinking about how we usually review accessibility.

We examine the barriers.

We identify what's missing.

We test the interface.

We assess whether somebody can complete the task.

Which is entirely sensible when the task is completing a tax return or obtaining medical information.

But what was the task with Come and Get Me?

Reading a story.

Enjoying it, perhaps.

Understanding the joke.

Caring about the people.

Wanting to turn the page.

Charlotte asked us the only question she seemed to care about: did we enjoy reading her book?

And we did.

So I've invented an accessibility audit for fiction.

Don't worry. It has no standards, no certification scheme, and absolutely no intention of becoming an international working group.

Here are the results.

Come and Get Me: SEE SAW reader experience audit

Could both reviewers read the work independently?

Yes.

Could both follow the story?

Yes.

Did both understand the significance of the forty-one-mile journey and the thirty metres of gravel?

Yes.

Did both understand the joke involving the robot's battery?

Yes.

Did both recognise the difference between needing assistance and choosing companionship?

Yes.

Did both laugh?

Yes.

Did both become emotionally invested in the characters?

Yes.

Did both want to know the dog's name?

Repeatedly.

Did either reviewer notice that the dog had no legs?

No.

Did either reviewer consider the missing legs an obstacle to enjoying the book?

Not until Charlotte told us about them.

Overall finding:

Two blind women successfully read, understood, discussed and enjoyed an accessible graphic novel created by a blind woman.

One dog remains anatomically incomplete.

Now, before you object, I know this doesn't tell us whether the visual experience is satisfactory for sighted readers.

It doesn't tell us whether every description accurately corresponds to every panel.

It certainly doesn't establish that the production process was reliable.

Those are separate questions.

But I think we have been in danger of allowing the questions we cannot answer to obscure the ones we can.

And there's something else.

You said in your last email that Charlotte judged the work against her own priorities.

I think that's the crucial point.

Not because authors get to declare their own work successful.

Readers still get to disagree.

But because accessibility ought to expand the range of things people can choose to create, not impose a new set of obligations on them once they do.

Charlotte didn't ask permission to enter visual culture.

She didn't wait for a technology company to create an approved accessible comic-making platform.

She didn't produce a research proposal and recruit a university partner.

She spent £37, lost a weekend, invented a woman called Sloppy Jo, and made a graphic novel.

And when two accessibility reviewers came along demanding to know whether she'd achieved sufficient visual fidelity, she asked whether they'd enjoyed the bloody story.

I think that's rather wonderful.

I've also been thinking about the title of our programme.

Independence in the Balance.

We've spent twelve years asking what independence means for the people using technology.

Charlotte has made me wonder whether we should sometimes ask what it means for the people creating with it.

Perhaps independence includes the freedom to make something imperfect.

Perhaps it includes the freedom not to pursue somebody else's definition of excellence.

And perhaps, occasionally, it includes the freedom to publish a dog with no legs.

One final thing.

I've been going through our correspondence in preparation for the episode.

It's actually rather good.

All those emails about the comic, Charlotte's reply, our arguments, the interview preparation, and now this.

I wonder whether anyone would be interested in reading them.

Sam

P.S. If we publish the correspondence, please remove the bit where you said you thought Charlotte was irritating.

P.P.S. Actually, leave it in. She'd probably enjoy it.

Next: Delayed. Again..