ABOUT Poet Training Tool

Developed by The DIAGRAM Center (Digital Image And Graphic Resources for Accessible Materials), a Benetech Global Literacy initiative, the Poet Training Tool is a web based image description resource that helps people learn when and how to describe various types of images frequently found in educational books. Users of this tool have access to best practice guidelines and hands-on exercises that help cultivate skills for writing effective image descriptions for critical visual content.

The content found on this site was made possible through key partnerships with the Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media at WGBH (NCAM) and Touch Graphics, Inc. The current version of our web-based resource is broken up into three key sections. The first section guides users through the process of determining when a description is needed. The second section provides general and specific guidelines on how to produce an effective descriptions, along with examples produced by accessibility experts. The last section allows users to upload content and practice writing descriptions using their own images.

We are excited to share this resource with all of you and would like to acknowledge the key role that the DIAGRAM community and Poet Training Tool supporters have provided throughout the evolution of this project. Special thanks to the dozens of "image slam" and "describathon" volunteers who provided invaluable feedback, and without whom, this resource would not have been possible. We hope this reference will be helpful to all of you and encourage you to share it with others still learning about image accessibility. And as with all DIAGRAM Center products, please share your thoughts or contact us at info@diagramcenter.org to provide any feedback and suggestions you might have about our Poet Training Tool. Thank you for your support!


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The Poet Training Tool is an open source project that has been developed for the community. Share your feedback to help make this resource even better!