Multimodal Narrative Design, Literacy and Cross-modal Synthesis for Meaning-making of Complex Adaptive Microbial Systems: Towards a Blind and Visually Impaired Accessible Smart Microscopy

This paper proposes a narrative synthesis framework for developing meaning-making smart microscopy that is accessible to blind and visually impaired (BVI) individuals and enhancing the understanding of complex adaptive microbial systems. At the core of the narrative synthesis lie comic design, comic literacy, and cross-modal synthesis. The framework takes advantage of the multimodal nature of comics and their ability to handle complex, non-linear narratives for structuring and organizing microbial data to create meaning. Cross-modal synthesis handles creating narratives in multiple modalities such as text and sound, enabling BVI accessibility as well as new perspectives.