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Give these photos a listen.

It’s the time of year when newsrooms comb through thousands of photos to find a few dozen to represent the year in pictures.

This has always been an impossible task, perhaps never more so than in a year marked by national and international political upheaval, ever-rising concern about the planet’s future, and social unrest in nearly every corner of the world. No set of photos can capture the full range of stories that held our attention and shaped the year, and inevitably, as many important stories are excluded as included.

This year we would like to highlight another aspect of inclusion — the need for photo essays (and all photos) to be more accessible to those who can’t see. So, we've partnered with WGBH’s National Center for Accessible Media to present you with a more accessible “Year in Pictures.”

Each photo below is accompanied by both a caption and an audio description. While the caption identifies the date, subject and photographer, the audio description puts into words the key visual elements of each photo for people who are blind or have low vision. In addition, a text transcript of each image description is also available for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

These 25 images represent only a small fraction of the important stories of 2019, but we hope more of you will now have a richer experience engaging with them. Please have a look, a read, and a listen.

— Meredith Nierman, Director of Photography

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Find more information about descriptive audio and screen readers and see a list of credits.

