Embodied

“Embodied: a memoir comic,” by Rae Lanzerotti. On display: 14 March to September 2025, as part of Zines Forever! DIV Publications and Disability Justice at the Wellcome Collection in London, UK. (Curated by Dr. Lea Cooper and Adam Rose.)

As a multimodal digital, audible, and tactile comic, Embodied is among my first and ongoing experiments (2022 to present) with access tools and innovating blind and low vision accessibility in memoir comics, graphic medicine, and art assemblages.

To read Embodied, you may want to review this full intro first. Or go directly to links on this page and choose your own pathway. You’ll find links to mix-and-match several media. For example, listen to audio narration (with embedded image descriptions) or screen-read text while scrolling high-contrast images. Options include: connect to audio, link to images, access text version of the narration. A new BSL (British Sign Language) interpretation is available with the Wellcome Collection display.

Embodied is a symbolic memoir of change and adaptation. It’s part of my personal story of sudden sight loss during the early COVID pandemic. Audio moves the listener forward in time by pacing the narration of events, describing images, and bringing autobiographical details to the storyline.

This is a process narrative with a meditative and guided style. Somatic imagery creates part of the narration, and the reader is invited to imagine and feel the story taking shape.

In the touchable comic, pages unfold into a concertina, accordion style, “swell form” paper (tactile graphics tool) booklet that is made to be explored. Braille words and raised lines add to the tactual experience of holding the comic, with a QR code pointing to audio. Hidden interior elements tell the story in large print text.

Prizewinner, 2022 Accessible Comics Competition, SFSU Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability.

Also on Instagram, @RaeRotti published Embodied as 16 posts with image descriptions and alt text, consecutive posts start on April 6, 2023.

Special thanks: Carol, Adam, Jillian, Alicia, Monica, Peter C., AG, Cathy K, Bozho, NJG, Sketchy Characters, and many other friends, supporters, and community members.