The visual images in Dictee are famously captionless. They resist straightforward explanation. In writing image descriptions of the images in Dictee, I have tried to preserve the “captionlessness” of the original. The point here is not to explain the pictures—an image description is not identical to a caption—but to make Dictee more accessible to readers who are blind and visually impaired. I realize, of course, that in trying to make Dictee’s captionless images more “legible,” I have inevitably “mistranslated” Dictee as it was originally designed to be experienced. Its captionlessness is lost in translation despite my efforts to preserve it.

By sharing these image descriptions, then, I hope not only to make Dictee more accessible to readers who are blind and vision impaired but also to encourage more dialogue about the art and the practice of describing images and reading image descriptions. My image descriptions are far from perfect, and I invite others to improve upon them.