Coyote is a web application implemented with standard web 2.0 technologies. The frontend is comprised of an html5 interface with JavaScript and CSS being used to achieve an accessible and dynamic user interface. With respect to accessibility, WCAG 2.0 AA guidelines have been targeted, however, given that the very nature of Coyote involves unlabeled images, not all functional criteria are appropriate. The backend is implemented on top of the popular Ruby on Rails platform. Coyote both consumes and offers RESTful APIs. External environments such as websites, mobile apps, or other software can request image descriptions from Coyote by using said RESTful API. Coyote learns about the images needing to be described by consuming external APIs such as that of a CMS. While Coyote’s primary goal is to be the canonical holder of image description, it does not strive nor is meant to be the canonical holder of image data or metadata not related to description. Coyote offers role-based logins to facilitate a workflow approach towards image description. To this end, those who are administrators may approve, assign, and review descriptions. When users log in, they are presented with a queue-based interface for authoring descriptions that they have been assigned. Realizing that image description is a context-sensitive process, Coyote offers content creators the ability to author both multiple types and multiple instances of a single type of description per image. In addition, a tagging interface exists to assist in search and organization activities within the interface.
Check out this screen recorded walk through of Version 1.0:
Transcript:
Hello. Welcome to Coyote. This is the sign up/log in screen, we’ll first log in as a regular user.
Once logged in you are presented with the status of all images and descriptions as well as the current status of your own descriptions. Below that you will see a queue of images assigned to you, select something and click describe to get started.
If the image has already been described by someone else, you’ll be able to see their descriptions, this is a useful way to learn.
Now you’ll fill the description field, “A painting of a head of a red and white cartoon mouse with a wide grin and big sparkly eyes.” Then you’ll select the type of description you wrote: either short alt text or long description, in this case, alt.
An administrator sees a similar log in screen. They see a set of statistics with more information, such as how many descriptions have been approved and assigned so that they have a clear sense of when they need to make more assignments or pick up the pace on reviewing submitted descriptions.
Below this is the admin queue of all undescribed images with priority images appearing first, then the unassigned images, and finally the ready to review queue. Here, the administrator sees the description that we wrote earlier, and options to approve, reject, or edit.
Going to the MCA website we can see this image in its published context. When alt text is enabled in the browser the descriptions provided by Coyote appears when mousing over the image.