The Polaroid Wall
The wall in Enid’s Room is grey rectangles. They are placeholders for photographs of our community, and they stay grey until somebody sends one — because the one thing a wall like this cannot be filled with is stock photography of strangers pretending to be us.
WHAT WE ARE ASKING FOR
A photo of you, or of you and your people. Not a good photo. Not a flattering one. The one where nobody made you smile.
There is no standard to meet. Blurry is fine, badly lit is fine, half a face is fine, a photo of your hands or your dog or the ceiling you were looking at is fine. This is a wall in a room named after a character who does not match the house.
What we promise
| The promise | What makes it true rather than nice |
|---|---|
| It comes down when you say so | One message. No reason required, no conversation, no asking whether you are sure. This is why your photo is excluded from the site’s Creative Commons licence: CC BY-SA cannot be revoked, so a photo published under it could not be taken back even after you withdrew. Yours carries no onward licence at all. |
| Nobody else gets to reuse it | The rest of this site invites reuse. Your photograph does not. It stays yours and the photographer’s, used here with permission and nowhere else. |
| You write the caption and the alt text | Both. You know what is in the picture and what you want said about it. We will not describe you in our words, and we will not publish a photo with no description at all — a picture nobody can hear is not on a Disabled people’s site by accident, it is there by neglect. |
| Your name is however you write it | Full name, first name, handle, or nothing at all. Anonymous is a real option and does not make the photo worth less. |
| The location data is removed | Photos carry hidden metadata — where you were, when, on what device. We strip it before publishing, and our own tool refuses to publish a file that still has it. Sending us a photo should not tell the internet where you live. |
What we need with the photo
Four things, and the tool that builds the wall will not publish a photo missing any of them:
- A description of what is in the picture, for anybody who cannot see it. A sentence is plenty.
- A caption, if you want one — the handwriting under the photo. This can be a joke.
- Who is in it, named the way you want to be named, or marked anonymous.
- Who took it, if that is somebody else, and their permission too. A photographer owns their photograph; being in a picture is not the same as owning it.
Photographs of children
We do not publish photographs of children. Not because the consent could not be given — a parent can give it — but because the child cannot take it back in ten years when it matters to them, and a permanent public photograph is not a decision somebody else should make on their behalf. If your kid wants to be on this wall when they are older, they will still be welcome then.
What we are not going to do
Ask for a better photo. Crop you. Filter you. Put your photo in a fundraising appeal, a grant application, or an advertisement. Use it to represent Disability in the abstract to somebody who needs a stock image. Keep a copy after you have asked us to stop.
How to send one, and how to take it back
Reach us through the Stimpunks contact page or in our community. Tell us what you want said about the picture and how you want to be named.
To take it down, the same routes, and the word remove is enough. It comes off the wall and out of the repository, and the record of your consent goes with it.
HOW LOUD DO YOU WANT IT?
Starts wherever your device says. Nothing moves, flashes, or plays until you say so.