Photo Group Collections to Illustrate Your Blogs and Other Writing

Our Flickr account holds photos from conferences and meetings. These are collected in photo albums on the Photos page. In addition to the SIG’s photos, we are connected to several groups in Flickr that contain interesting images to use for your blogs and other writing related to accessibility and technical communication. Scroll to the section on the Photos page called Group Photos and review the collection for each group. You’ll be sure to find something you can use or get a few laughs. The groups are listed as follows:

• Usability & Accessibility – Photos from the UPA.
• Access – This group is about recognizing barriers and illustrating how barriers “handicap” those with disabilities, and those who would like to accompany those with disabilities to enjoy all the benifits of their community. Photos are access shots that demonstrate in some meaningful way how a person with a disibility has been provided access to his or her community, or been denied access to his or her community.
• Design: Oohs & Aaughs – Photos of both praiseworthy and inadequate design. These are products, objects, and experiences (good or bad), which impact us enough to stop and take notice (and take a photo, too).
• ERROR – Photos of any and all kinds of errors… mainly dealing with computers.
• This Is Broken – Photos about the brokenness (bad design) of items, places, etc.
• Accessible Travel – Photos of accessibility in tourism hot spots around the world. This includes wheelchair access, Braille signage, sound, markers for the hearing impaired, accessible and inaccessible intersections, public transportation, maps, lodging, restaurants, bathrooms, telephones and communication infrastructure, museum signage, best practices/worst practices, You (!) enjoying a public place with superb accessibility.
• Wheelchair Accessible Trails – Photos taken on wheelchair accessible or paved hiking trails.
• Rolling Rains – Travel with a Disability – This group gives travelers with disabilities, their travel companions, friends, and allies of the disability community a place to post about travel. Sometimes we see (or use other senses) differently; sometimes not. To publish your work here you don’t need to snap a shot of every curb cut or Braille road sign – aesthetics counts – but somehow weave in insights about accessibility as you tell your story. The combination of photos, firsthand commentary, and the ability to contact the poster provides a unique and ever-changing consumer-level guide for the disability community on to where to go for a good time.
• Wheelchair development – Photos about wheelchair development that improves the usability and the technical equipment of current wheelchairs, reduce pricing, add some brakes and the ability to manoeuvre even under bad circumstances like ramps, boardwalks, street crossing, and going over rough surfaces without being smashed to the ground.
• Old Wheelchairs, Gurneys, & Outdated Medical Equip – Photographs of outdated/decayed/found Medical Equipment/Devices. The older the better.
• Writing Machines – Photos of typewriters, printing presses, and movable type—anything to do with the mechanical reproduction or creation of the written word.
• Writing – Photos about writing and the life of writers. If you are a writer/journalist, you can show fragments of your writing life. Includes photos of handwritten pieces, pens, notebooks, Moleskines, and so on. Photos of people writing and artworks if the theme is “words, writing, writers”.
• Written In Stone – Photos of inscriptions (i.e., words, phrases, names) carved into stone such as on tombs, monuments, and buildings.
• Washington, DC Chapter – Photos from STC conferences, banquets, and meetings.

If you encounter another group you think we should add, please send us a note with the name of the Flickr group.