Govt.nz hosted the web presence for the NZ Flag Consideration project. As part of this project, the public submitted over 10,000 alternative flag designs.
As well the gallery of designs and pages around it, the team I worked in designed the workflow for flag submissions, which included the public submitting designs, the flag team moderating and tagging them, and the flag selection panel creating their shortlists.
One challenge was to create alternative text descriptions for the designs so that non-sighted users could get a sense of them. There were hundreds of designs being submitted each day, so our solution was for moderators to quickly tag the designs with the colours and symbols they contained.
These tags formed the alt text, as well as enabling search and filtering functionality. This meant all 10,000 designs had a basic text description, which was then elaborated on for the ‘long list’ of 40. Users could also click through to individual designs to read the submitter’s description if they wanted more information.
Meg Douglas Howie 