Ellie to Sam: she’s made it into a bloody comic!

From: ellie@seesaw.charli.info
To: sam@seesaw.charli.info
Subject: SHE'S MADE IT INTO A BLOODY COMIC!

Sam,

Do you remember Come and Get Me?

Of course you do. We spent most of an episode arguing about whether independence means doing things yourself or deciding when you'd rather not.

Well.

Charlotte Joanne has turned it into a graphic novel.

An ACCESSIBLE graphic novel.

The woman is blind, Sam. She's taken a story about blindness, which we reviewed as an example of an emerging genre of disability fiction, and turned it into a visual medium.

I have seventeen pages of comic in front of me, plus a cover. Apparently there's an artist called Sloppy Jo.

I haven't decided whether this is brilliant, ridiculous, or a deliberate attempt to give accessibility reviewers nervous breakdowns.

Possibly all three.

And before you start, yes, I know blind people can make visual art. That isn't my point.

My point is that this woman has apparently decided that writing speculative accessibility fiction wasn't sufficiently complicated, so she's started experimenting with the accessibility of the medium itself.

We need to talk to her.

And I want to know exactly what she means by accessible graphic novel. How does the reading experience work? What have they done with the panel descriptions? What happens to the visual jokes?

Also, who the hell is Sloppy Jo?

Ellie

P.S. I still think the dog is the best character.

Sam to Ellie: re: she’s made it into a bloody comic!

From: sam@seesaw.charli.info
To: ellie@seesaw.charli.info
Subject: Re: SHE'S MADE IT INTO A BLOODY COMIC!

Ellie,

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

Oh, I love this woman.

We've spent years telling people that accessibility shouldn't mean finding increasingly elaborate ways to experience things designed for sighted people.

And Charlotte Joanne has apparently decided to make a comic.

A COMIC.

And make it accessible.

You realise what she's done, don't you?

She's gone straight past both of us.

You'd have asked how to make a graphic novel accessible to blind readers.

I'd have asked why blind readers should have to navigate a visual medium in the first place.

She's apparently asked, "What if I made one?"

Infuriating.

I've downloaded it. Seventeen pages, plus the cover. The artwork is charmingly peculiar. The woman has glasses, the man has a hat, and the dog looks like it knows considerably more than either of them.

And there's a robot called J2O2.

I've just reached the bit where she leaves it in the car boot, fully charged, and tells her friend the battery is flat.

EIGHTY-NINE PER CENT, ELLIE.

The little liar!

Now, before we get carried away, I want to know whether this thing is actually accessible or merely accompanied by descriptions. Those are not necessarily the same thing, and I suspect you'll be insufferably pleased to hear me say so.

I also want to know how she made it.

Not because a blind woman making a comic is some sort of inspirational miracle. Please shoot me if I ever say anything like that.

Because I want to know who's making the decisions.

Who decided what the characters look like? Who chose the panels? Who controlled the pacing? Who decided that the robot's battery indicator should occupy an entire panel?

Was Charlotte Joanne directing Sloppy Jo? Was Sloppy Jo interpreting Charlotte Joanne? Was an AI involved? And if so, doing what?

There's a potentially fascinating distinction here between getting an AI to illustrate your story and using AI to exercise creative control over a visual medium you cannot directly inspect.

And if she's genuinely done the latter, we've got rather more than a book review on our hands.

One thing, though.

You said we need to talk to her.

Agreed.

But first we should read the accessible version properly, separately, and compare notes. I don't want either of us deciding what it achieves before we've actually experienced it.

Then we can approach Charlotte Joanne.

As for Sloppy Jo, I have no idea who she is.

My money's on another bloody robot.

Lunch Thursday?

Sam

P.S. The dog is absolutely the best character. I'm beginning to suspect the entire comic is secretly about him.

P.P.S. Do you think Charlotte Joanne has read our original review? Because if she has, I would quite like to know whether she's doing this to annoy us.

SEE SAW to Charlotte Joanne: an invitation

From: show@seesaw.charli.info
To: charlotte.joanne@blind-ant.com
Subject: Come and Get Me — an invitation from SEE SAW

Dear Charlotte,

We're Ellie Seeley and Sam Sawyer, presenters of SEE SAW: Independence in the Balance.

We reviewed your Come and Get Me stories a few months ago, when we were discussing Speculative Accessibility as an emerging literary genre. We rather liked them. Particularly the dog.

Then you went and turned the whole thing into a graphic novel.

We met for coffee on Thursday, having separately read the new edition, and spent two hours discussing it. We had intended to talk about three other things as well. We didn't get to any of them.

We would love to invite you onto SEE SAW for an interview.

We have quite a few questions, and we thought it only fair to give you some idea of what you're letting yourself in for.

First, why a graphic novel?

You'd already written the story. It worked. We reviewed it. What made you decide that it needed pictures? And why comics, rather than illustrated prose or animation?

Second, what exactly makes this an accessible graphic novel?

We've both encountered comics with image descriptions. We're interested in whether you've attempted something different. Is the accessible version a translation of the visual work, or did accessibility influence how the comic itself was constructed?

Third, how did you make it?

We understand that you're blind and that the artwork is credited to Sloppy Jo. We'd love to understand the working relationship. Who decided how the characters should look? Who designed the panels? Who chose the colours, expressions and framing? How did you know whether the finished pages matched what you intended?

And, perhaps most importantly, how did you decide when something was finished?

Fourth, the battery.

Eighty-nine per cent.

An entire panel devoted to telling the reader that the robot is perfectly capable of getting her across the car park, immediately after she's told her friend it's flat.

It's one of our favourite moments in the book.

But it raises an interesting question: how does a blind author construct a visual joke that depends on the reader seeing something the characters don't know?

Fifth, is this still the same story?

When we first reviewed Come and Get Me, we discussed independence, interdependence and the difference between needing someone's help and wanting their company.

Now we're wondering whether the graphic novel adds something new. Have the pictures changed the meaning, or simply given the existing meaning another way to reach readers?

We don't entirely agree about this, which is fairly normal for us.

And finally, what are you actually trying to do?

We don't mean that in an accusatory way.

Are you exploring new forms of accessible publishing? Making art because you want to make art? Demonstrating what AI-assisted production now makes possible? Challenging assumptions about who gets to create visual culture?

Or have we spent an entire afternoon constructing an elaborate theory around a woman who simply fancied making a comic?

We would genuinely enjoy any of those answers.

We should explain something about SEE SAW. Ellie has been blind since childhood and comes from a fairly traditional accessibility background. Sam lost her sight in her thirties and is more interested in what happens when technology removes the need for conventional interfaces.

We agree on rather less than you might expect, although we both liked your book.

We're not looking for an inspirational account of a blind woman overcoming adversity to create pictures. We're interested in authorship, creative decisions, accessibility, and what happens when the technology changes what an artist can attempt.

We'd be delighted if you'd join us.

Warm wishes,

Eleanor Seeley and Samantha Sawyer
SEE SAW: Independence in the Balance
show@seesaw.charli.info

P.S. Ellie would like to know whether the dog has a name.

P.P.S. Sam would like to know who Sloppy Jo is.

P.P.P.S. We have agreed not to ask you whether AI is going to replace artists. We cannot promise not to ask whether it might replace accessibility consultants.

Charlotte Joanne to SEE SAW: re: an invitation

From: charlotte.joanne@blind-ant.com
To: show@seesaw.charli.info
Subject: Re: Come and Get Me — an invitation from SEE SAW

Dear Ellie and Sam,

I remember your review of Come and Get Me and your discussion of Speculative Accessibility as an emerging literary genre. You particularly liked the dog, from what I seem to remember.

Off the top of my head:

Why a graphic novel? Because I could. I worked out a way of doing it and wanted to cheer myself up, with the news that Glide is delayed, again!

Why a comic? Honestly, I am exploring agentic accessibility, a field that has literally existed for less than two months. I decided to walk before I run.

What exactly makes this an accessible graphic novel? It is a comic. It has panels, captions, channels, etc. The story operates like a comic. Sighted people can enjoy it.

This is my second comic. The first was rubbish. I told an AI to turn this story into a graphic novel. It did, and it missed the joke in the first paragraph that was the entire point of the story.

I realised I knew nothing about drawing comics, so I recruited Sloppy Jo.

She learnt about the craft of comic writing, so she was able to produce a script she could review and improve. A script that was written like any other script for a comic.

Jo then very deliberately chose a visual design that was easier to create than something super high def and artistic.

The comic is “drawn” by code. An AI, Claude in this case, writes Python scripts to generate the images. Unlike the sort of image generation we have had for the past few years, this means characters, dogs, robots, cars etc. should look exactly the same every time. Because the images are drawn with code, the model knows what should be there, so when a different model checks it, we can cross-reference.

What, did you think this wasn’t going to be AI?

I tried to do the whole seventeen pages at once. It took all weekend and £37 of real cash money, and the QA agent never finished. On one page towards the end, the dog has no legs!

Charlotte

Charlotte Joanne
Blind Ant
charlotte.joanne@blind-ant.com

Ellie to Sam: how to handle her

From: ellie@seesaw.charli.info
To: sam@seesaw.charli.info
Subject: How to handle her

Sam,

She said yes. Did you read that reply? She answered half our questions, ignored the other half, and told us more than we asked. A weekend. Thirty-seven pounds. A quality-checking robot that never finished. A dog with no legs.

"What, did you think this wasn't going to be AI?" No, Charlotte, we didn't. What we want to know is whose decisions they were.

Two things before Thursday week. A good one and a bad one.

The good one. She says the pictures are drawn by code, so the machine knows what should be there, and a second machine checks it. Lovely. We test the other half of the system: her. Before the show, you and I each pick a page we haven't discussed. On air, she describes that page from memory: no notes, no screen reader, just what she thinks is on it. Then we read her the book's own description of the same page. If they match, she's the author, whoever wrote the Python. And then we ask her which page the dog has no legs on. If she knows, she reads her own book more closely than her quality checker does.

The bad one, and it's ours, not hers.

Think about how we read this book. We both read the accessible version. Neither of us has seen a single page. Everything we know about the pictures, we know because she told us. We are two blind women about to review a visual medium entirely through the descriptions its author wrote. We'd be marking her homework with her own answer sheet.

And now we know how she checked it: one machine drew it, and another machine marked it. Her answer sheet was written by a robot. Ours was written by her.

I can't fix that from here, and I'm not sure we should try. Because it's exactly the problem she had making the thing. She couldn't see the pages either. She had to decide whether to trust what she was told.

So maybe that's the question. Not "how did you know it was right?" but "how would anyone know?" Ask her first. Then ask us.

Ellie

P.S. She still hasn't told us the dog's name. She's hiding something.

P.P.S. "I recruited Sloppy Jo." You said she'd be another bloody robot. You were right, and so was I: she's a woman who tells a robot what to draw. I think we owe each other a tenner.

Next: After the interview.