ACRL visual literacy unlocks insights from drone imagery

Visual literacy is the ability to critically interpret and create meaning from images a skill increasingly vital in our image-saturated world. The proliferation of readily available drone imagery, offering novel perspectives on landscapes and events, dramatically increases the need for this competency. Without the skills to analyze these visuals effectively, we risk misinterpreting data and overlooking crucial information captured from above. The Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) is addressing this gap with new frameworks for visual literacy education.

That grammar has been slowly taking shape in academic libraries. In April 2022, the Association of College and Research Libraries Board of Directors approved a document called the Companion Document to the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education: Visual Literacy, a framework years in the making and rooted in empirical research conducted between 2019 and 2021. For aerial photographers, media makers, and visual content professionals, it offers more than institutional language it offers a vocabulary for the work they already do.

The Problem the Framework Addresses

Students across higher education must have opportunities to develop critical and ethical ways of engaging with visual information in order to become discerning citizens in today's image-saturated society.

That statement, from the introduction to the Framework for Visual Literacy in Higher Education, captures the stakes. Visual literacy is not a niche concern for art departments. It is a capacity for navigating a world increasingly organized around images, data visualizations, and multimodal communication. The framework's authors note that while some see visual literacy as a concern limited to the fields of art, architecture, and design, visual information is truly multidisciplinary in nature.

This recognition matters for aerial media practitioners. A drone survey of agricultural land, a thermal image from a search-and-rescue operation, a satellite composite of urban growth these are not merely technical products. They are visual arguments, shaped by perspective, timing, processing, and presentation. Understanding how to read them, and how to produce them responsibly, requires the same critical capacities the framework describes.

What Visual Literacy Means, Defined

The framework draws on a definition first articulated in the 2011 ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, which remains commonly used in the context of librarianship:

Visual literacy is a set of abilities that enables an individual to effectively find, interpret, evaluate, use, and create images and visual media. Visual literacy skills equip a learner to understand and analyze the contextual, cultural, ethical, aesthetic, intellectual, and technical components involved in the production and use of visual materials. A visually literate individual is both a critical consumer of visual media and a competent contributor to a body of shared knowledge and culture.

The definition is capacious. It encompasses not just the ability to decode an image but to situate it contextually, culturally, ethically. For someone working with aerial imagery, this means understanding why a particular angle was chosen, what the lighting conditions reveal or obscure, how the image will be interpreted by different audiences, and what obligations the creator carries.

Visual literacy skills, the definition continues, equip a learner to understand and analyze the contextual, cultural, ethical, aesthetic, intellectual, and technical components involved in the production and use of visual materials. This is a demanding standard. It asks more than technical proficiency. It asks for judgment.

Four Themes for Learning

The framework organizes visual literacy learning around four emerging themes, identified through the VLTF's empirical research. These themes form the structure of the companion document and offer a useful map for anyone thinking about visual literacy systematically.

Learners Participate in a Changing Visual Information Landscape

The first theme acknowledges that visual information is not static. New capture technologies drones, 360-degree cameras, satellite constellations, computational photography continuously reshape what images are possible and how they circulate. The visual landscape is not a fixed environment but an evolving one, shaped by technical innovation, platform economics, and shifting social practices around sharing and consumption.

For aerial photographers, this is obvious. The difference between a 2010 aerial survey and a 2024 one is not just resolution it is an entirely different relationship between the camera, the subject, and the viewer. The framework invites learners to understand this dynamism more than treating visual literacy as a set of stable skills for a stable environment.

Learners Perceive Visuals as Communicating Information

The second theme emphasizes that visuals are not merely decorative. They are communicative acts, carrying meaning shaped by design choices, cultural context, and the relationship between producer and audience. A thermal infrared image of a building is not neutral it foregrounds heat signatures in a way that makes certain features legible and others invisible.

This theme invites visual practitioners to think about their work as communication more than mere capture. The choice of focal length, altitude, time of day, and post-processing all shape what the image says. The framework does not demand a single correct interpretation but rather an awareness that interpretation is happening that every visual choice is a rhetorical choice.

Learners Practice Visual Discernment and Criticality

The third theme is perhaps the most directly relevant to the question of visual literacy as a practiced skill. Visual discernment involves the ability to evaluate visual materials to ask who made this, for what purpose, under what constraints, and with what interests in mind. Criticality involves recognizing that visual representations are never transparent windows onto reality but are constructed accounts, shaped by the perspectives and limitations of their creators.

For aerial media, this translates into a set of questions: What was the flight path, and what did it exclude? What time of day was the capture, and what shadows or reflections resulted? What processing was applied, and what did it emphasize or suppress? These are not skeptical challenges but professional habits the difference between operating a tool and understanding it.

Learners Pursue Social Justice Through Visual Practice

The fourth theme is the most ambitious and the most contested. It positions visual literacy not merely as a professional skill but as a civic capacity one that can support more equitable forms of representation and more just distributions of visual authority. The framework notes that students across higher education must have opportunities to develop critical and ethical ways of engaging with visual information in order to become discerning citizens in today's image-saturated society.

For aerial photographers, this raises questions about who has access to aerial capture, whose landscapes get documented, and how aerial imagery is used in planning, policy, and public discourse. It does not require a political program it requires an awareness that visual practice has consequences beyond the image itself.

The Research Behind the Framework

What distinguishes the 2022 framework from earlier standards documents is its empirical foundation. The VLTF conducted research from 2019 to 2021, interviewing stakeholders in a range of roles and disciplines. The goal was to identify what these practitioners perceived to be important trends, challenges, and opportunities for visual literacy.

This research-informed approach reflects a broader shift in educational standards development. more than assuming what visual literacy means from first principles, the task force went to practitioners and asked them to describe their own visual literacy challenges and needs. The resulting framework is thus not a prescriptive list of skills but a flexible structure designed to support a variety of users, including scholars, librarians, students, and communities of practice.

The Visual Literacy Today Frameworks and Standards page notes that the ACRL groups and task forces regularly review existing literacy guidelines and standards. As a component of this revision, these groups were asked to align existing literacy standards and guidelines with the 2016 ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. This alignment is significant: visual literacy is positioned not as a standalone domain but as a component of information literacy more broadly.

What This Means for ElevatedPerceptions Readers

For readers researching practitioners, frameworks, and ideas in photography, aerial media, and visual content, the ACRL framework offers a structured vocabulary for a set of practices that may have previously gone unnamed. Visual literacy is not a brand or a methodology it is a field of scholarly and professional inquiry with a documented history, a defined scope, and an ongoing research base.

The framework's four themes provide a useful lens for evaluating visual work. Whether you are assessing a portfolio, designing a curriculum, reviewing a brief, or producing imagery yourself, the questions the framework raises about landscape, communication, discernment, and justice are questions worth carrying. They do not have easy answers, but they are the right questions.

The temporal context matters here. The framework was approved in April 2022, and the empirical research informing it was conducted between 2019 and 2021. The visual landscape it describes has continued to evolve since then, with advances in AI-generated imagery, real-time satellite coverage, and autonomous capture systems. The framework provides a foundation, but the terrain it maps is one that visual practitioners are still exploring.

How the Framework Is Structured for Use

The framework is not designed as a standalone document. The introduction explicitly states that it is to be used in direct discourse with the 2016 ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. This is an important design choice: visual literacy is positioned as a companion capacity to information literacy, not a replacement or an alternative.

The document also uses the phrase, "Learners who are developing their visual literacy abilities," to signal that visual literacy requires continuous and lifelong engagement. This is not a certification to be earned but a capacity to be cultivated. The framework is designed to be flexible, supporting a variety of users across disciplines and contexts.

For aerial media practitioners, this flexibility is a feature. The framework does not prescribe specific technical competencies or equipment requirements. Instead, it offers a conceptual structure that can be adapted to different capture modalities, different audiences, and different professional contexts. Whether you are working with consumer drones, professional survey equipment, or satellite imagery, the framework's themes provide a common language for discussing visual literacy practices.

The Scope of Visual Information

The framework's definition of visual information is deliberately broad. Visuals can include but are not limited to charts, drawings, graphs, icons, maps, memes, paintings, photographs, symbols, or other visualizations, as well as multimodal texts with visual elements. This breadth reflects the reality that visual communication is not confined to a single medium or format.

For aerial photographers, this scope is reassuring. The framework does not privilege traditional photography over other forms of visual representation. A drone-captured orthomosaic map is as much a visual text as a carefully composed landscape photograph. Both require visual literacy to interpret and produce responsibly.

The framework also notes that visual literacy definitions differ among disciplines. The definition it adopts from the 2011 ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education is commonly used in the context of librarianship, but it is not the only definition in circulation. Other fields may emphasize different aspects of visual competency. The framework's value lies not in establishing a single correct definition but in providing a working vocabulary that can be adapted across contexts.

Why This Framework Matters Now

The visual landscape has changed significantly since the 2011 standards were published. The proliferation of drone technology, the availability of high-resolution satellite imagery, and the rise of AI-generated visuals have created new possibilities and new challenges for visual literacy. The 2022 framework is an attempt to update the conceptual vocabulary to match this changed landscape.

For aerial media practitioners, this is an opportune moment. The framework provides a language for describing what you do not just in technical terms, but in terms of learning outcomes, critical capacities, and civic responsibilities. It offers a way to situate your work within a broader conversation about visual culture, information literacy, and the role of images in public life.

The framework also offers a resource for educators and program designers. If you are developing curriculum around aerial photography, media literacy, or visual communication, the framework's four themes provide a structure for organizing learning objectives. The associated knowledge practices and dispositions offer more granular guidance for designing learning experiences.

Reading Further

For readers who want to explore the framework in full, the Companion Document to the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education: Visual Literacy is available through the ACRL LibGuides platform. The document includes the full introduction, the four themes, and guidance on how the framework is intended to be used.

The ACRL Visual Literacy Task Force's draft version of the framework, published on January 12, 2022, provides additional context about the drafting process and the research underlying the document. The draft includes a selected bibliography and information about panels and presentations related to the framework's development.

For the historical context of visual literacy standards in higher education, the ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education page on the American Library Association website provides access to the 2011 standards that preceded the 2022 framework. Understanding the evolution from standards to framework illuminates the shift from prescriptive competency lists to flexible, research-informed conceptual structures.

The Visual Literacy Today Frameworks and Standards page offers a broader overview of visual literacy standards across different contexts, including the European Network for Visual Literacy's Common European Framework of Reference for Visual Literacy. This comparative context can be useful for readers interested in how visual literacy is conceptualized beyond the North American academic library context.

Key Terms and Concepts

Conclusion

The ACRL Framework for Visual Literacy in Higher Education is, at its core, a document about seeing about the capacities required to navigate a world saturated with images, and about the responsibilities that come with producing them. For aerial photographers and visual content professionals, it offers not a prescription but a vocabulary: a set of terms and distinctions that can make visible the invisible work of visual practice.

The framework does not mention drones. It does not discuss aerial photography specifically. But its definition of visual literacy its emphasis on contextual, cultural, ethical, aesthetic, intellectual, and technical understanding applies directly to the work of capturing the world from above. The aerial perspective is not exempt from these demands. If anything, the elevated vantage point intensifies them: what you see from 400 feet is not what you see from ground level, and the difference matters.

Visual literacy, the framework suggests, is not a destination but a practice. It requires continuous and lifelong engagement. For those working in aerial media, this is not a burden but an invitation to bring the same rigor to the visual dimension of their work that they bring to the technical dimension, and to understand the two as inseparable.