The Research Catalogue (RC) has grown to become an essential tool in the artistic research field. Given its wide usage both within public institutions and outside, SAR is committed to remove unnecessary technical barriers that prevent users with different abilities from accessing its content.
Artistic Qualities Embedded in Chosen Formats
The aim of the RC formats is to ensure and enable the use of relevant media for articulating and documenting diverse artistic research practices. In improving accessibility, we have observed a fundamental challenge when it comes to providing accessible alternatives for visual and time-based media within RC expositions. Although it is possible to provide a text description of certain elements that are present, the artistic content of media may often form a challenge, since essential (artistic) qualities are entangled with the unique form of the medium itself. The reason for this is that within RC expositions, media is not only included to communicate propositional knowledge but is used to demonstrate specific qualities in the practice of the art itself. For example: in a fragment of a film, one can describe the colour, plot, and objects visible, but the cinematic qualities are by definition impossible to capture sufficiently in a text description.
The creator(s)’ responsibility
For the same reasons, the final responsibility for how to present the outcomes and documentation of the artistic practice/research and how to meet accessibility standards within each exposition, lies with the creator(s). However, in case an exposition is published by a portal, this portal may include guidelines to the creator(s) on how to meet accessibility standards.
RC Provided and Planned Actions
Despite these limitations surrounding artistic meaning, we nonetheless aim to make structural frames and content within the Research Catalogue as accessible as possible:
• Making sure that the user interface and navigation of the RC pages follow best practices in web accessibility.
• Providing a text-based editor for expositions, which can be used without a mouse/touchpad.
• Providing tools within expositions to annotate media in alternative ways, where this is possible.
We encourage you to contact us if you have trouble accessing the Research Catalogue: support@researchcatalogue.net .