APH Guidelines for Print Document Design

http://www.aph.org/edresearch/lpguide.htm

These are some great guidelines to remember for the classroom as well. I'm printing a few here and the rest can be found at the link provided above. For some of my babies with learning disabilities who are in resource or special classes I suggest using Comic Sans font as it's like the teacher's handwriting. ~K

J. Elaine Kitchel
Low Vision Project Leader
American Printing House for the Blind
The American Printing House for the Blind (APH) believes guidelines for print documents should be brought to a standard of optimal usability for persons with low vision. The standards should be based on fundamental principles gleaned from research that originated from the study of the impact of print characteristics on readers of print products. This research also includes existing industry standards, where they apply.
With the advent of word processing, document design has become an intrinsic part of writing. Writers for APH encounter a wide array of new printing options. The knowledgeable use of these options helps the writer gain an advantage because readers of APH materials have become accustomed to very well-designed documents. For the writer of documents at APH, it has become an imperative to be knowledgeable about typography and design.
It is impossible to teach the writer everything he/she should know in a brief primer, but here are the essentials:

A. Use a Readable Typeface/Font

For text, a readable typeface means a sans-serif (/san-ser-if/) typeface (or font) made up of mainly straight lines. A serif is a short stroke that projects from the ends of the main strokes that make up a character. These are not desirable for use in a book to be read by persons of all ages and/or persons with visual impairments.
Although serif typefaces often work well in headings and personal stationery, they can be difficult to read in continuous text. Among the better san-serifed typefaces are APHont, Antique Olive, Tahoma, Verdana, and Helvetica.
The minimum size of any typeface to be used on APH documents is 12 points. Most large
print is 18 points.

• 12 pt. = regular print
• 14-16 pt. = "enlarged" print (not considered large print)
• 18 and larger = large print
• 18 and larger, with other formatting changes = enhanced print
• Note: Students who need print 28 points or larger should probably be considered as candidates for Braille education.

Here are the primary things to think about when selecting a font for use by persons with low vision:

1. The upper case "I" and Roman Numeral I, the numeral 1, and the lower case l, should all look different from one another.
2. The font should be wide-bodied with space between each letter. Letters which have a bubble inside them, such as o, d, g, and others should have plenty of space inside the bubble.
3. Punctuation should be rounded, large and very visible.
4. For these reasons APHont was developed and is suggested as a font that meets all necessary guidelines.
5. Font strokes should be solid and without gaps in them.

B. Use White Space

Ample white space makes a page more readable and useful because it provides contrast to the print and creates luminance around the text. The primary ways to create white space on the page are to use generous margins, e.g., margins of at least one inch for letters and other business documents. Another way to provide white space is to provide ample spacing, leading and kerning to text.
APH encourages its writers to:

• Indent 1 inch at margins
• Justify left margin, unjustify right margin
• Use a wide, san-serif font for ample kerning
• Space 1.25 between lines, especially on forms where underscores and boxes are used to provide space for writing
• Double space (30-34 pt) between paragraphs or other bodies of text
• Use block paragraph style, no indents

Other ways include white space are, supply headings and sub-headings, enumerate items in separate paragraphs, subparagraphs, or bulleted lists.
White space is especially important on forms. Lots of horizontal lines, or grids with horizontal and vertical lines can be very difficult for some people with visual impairments to follow across the page. These difficulties can be minimized through the use of pastel, colored background for every alternate line. Example below:

State	Year	Auto Sales	Home Sales	Boat Sales
Alabama	2010	309,436	99,307	27,397
Delaware	2010	214,556	78,477	39,765
Virginia	2010	349, 887	125,095	33,482
Washington	2009	272,299	69,433	30,442

Crowded text detracts from readability and usability because contrast is limited by too much black text. In studies, persons with normal vision who filled-out crowded forms often lost focus before they reached the end of the task. Persons with vision impairments struggled more than their typically-sighted peers with forms and text.

See more guidelines at http://www.aph.org/edresearch/lpguide.htm

 

Bookshare: Training Resources Galore!

March 8, 2012 In this Issue Find Your Local Expert » Website Updates » Upcoming Webinars » New Training Resources » Bookshare at Home » Share and Connect Like this? Share with a friend! You can also keep up with the latest and greatest from Bookshare on the Bookshare blog, Facebook, Twitter or Accessible Twitter. In case you missed Dr. Seuss' birthday on March 2nd, it's never too late to enjoy his stories with your students! Oh, the Places You Will Go! My Many Colored Days The Lorax Dr. Seuss and His Stories The Boy on Fairfield Street: How Ted Geisel Grew Up to Become Dr. Seuss Dr. Seuss: Young Author and Artist (Childhood of Famous Americans Series) Introducing Your Bookshare Local Experts... Are you looking for a local contact to help you implement Bookshare at your school or district? Are you looking for some consultation on how best to use Bookshare in the classroom? We now have a list of Bookshare Local Experts who are available to provide Bookshare consultation. These are teachers who use Bookshare regularly and have some wonderful tips to share. If you are interested in contacting your local expert please email: kristinac@benetech.org and we will connect you. Website Updates Bookshare's product management and engineering teams have been hard at work to make Bookshare even better. This week, for example, you may have noticed the addition of a "My Book History" link to your account task bar (visible after you log in). For organizational members especially, we recommend viewing My Book History in Table View rather than List View. Then you can see the books you've downloaded as well as sort them by title, date downloaded, and student (organizational memberships only). You can also select a book title in order to download that book again. Learn more about this update, plus other helpful recent and future improvements, from the recording of our "Bookshare's Latest and Greatest" webinar. The recording is just under one hour in duration, but that includes about 20 minutes of Q&A. Upcoming Webinars This month we will be offering two partner webinars. Sign up today and learn about the variety of technology available to your students. AT Webinar: Bookshare and Texthelp Wednesday, March 14, 12:00 p.m. PDT, 1:00 p.m. MDT, 2:00 p.m. CDT, 3:00 p.m. EDT Join Bookshare and Texthelp to learn how to read Bookshare books using Read&Write GOLD and the recently launched Webapps, including the new eBook Reader. Sign up here. Thursday, March 22, 12:00 p.m. PDT, 1:00 p.m. MDT, 2:00 p.m. CDT, 3:00 p.m. EDT Join Bookshare and Cambium Learning Technologies to learn how to read Bookshare books using Kurzweil 3000 and the recently launched Webapp, Firefly. Sign up here. New Training Resources If you haven't discovered our new training resources then take a look! Now K-12 teachers can access a wide range of training materials to use with other teachers, parents and students. Take a peek. And for teachers-in-training at the post-secondary level we have a fantastic training section called Personnel Development Resource Materials. Find out more here. Bookshare at Home Don't forget to get your qualified students their own memberships for home use. This gives your students access to free technology and over 135,000 books! Watch this quick video and find out how easy it is to get them their own Bookshare memberships. Questions? Please contact us at http://ctsp0.vresp.com/c/?Benetech/10dbb09a83/4c3c4a90b9/5edf5a1173/utm_content=knl%40ebrschools.org&utm_source=VerticalResponse&utm_medium=Email&utm_term=www%2Ebookshare%2Eorg%2FcontactUs&utm_campaign=Training Resources Galore%21. AT Webinar: Bookshare and Kurzweil

© Copyright 2012, Beneficent Technology, Inc. (The Benetech Initiative) Benetech is a California nonprofit organization.

 

Celebrate Bookshare's 10 Year Anniversary

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Visual Impairments Specialist Scotlandville Elementary http://lee.ebrschools.org/kathynicholslee
http://www.kathyskids.org
http://teacherweb.com/LA/RobertELeeHigh/MrsMichael/t.aspx
http://mskathyskids.blogspot.com

Name Card for Practice in Writing

This is the name card I wrote about earlier. I prefer to use Print Shop Deluxe but my desk top computer, which is where PSD is installed, is working like molasses in winter. Thus I had to use my baby laptop and MS Word with Word Art. Blah. I prefer my old school PDS but one cannot be choosy in a pinch--and I was in a pinch this time!

Before you start, get some card stock instead of regular printing paper. I have a tabletop laminating machine which I use with the 8.5 inch by 11 inch laminating film. The film is thicker than the film on the large laminating machine used in most schools. This with the card stock will make a far sturdier card.

You may need a black marker if you're using MS Word or MS Works which is why I prefer PSD. But you probably can't find PSD anymore. So I will continue as if you're working in what most people already have on their computers.

Depending on the level of the student, I will use just the first name or first and last name. After opening a blank document, on the tool bar go to "FILE." In "page set up" choose "landscape.

Now go to "INSERT" on your tool bar. Choose "PICTURE" and slide over to "Word Art." In Word Art" find the hollow, colorless letters (which may be style 7 in Windows XP you will see if you roll the cursor over it). Click on this style and a dialogue box will pop up.

At the top left of this box in the gray area you will see the word "Font." Choose "Comic Sans." This is important. This font looks more like a beginner hand writer's font. Consistency in font is very important for beginning readers and writers. Also use a capital letter for the first letter of the first and last names only. Reading matter for beginners should keep this form as word shape also aids in reading. If you use all caps all words have the same rectangular shape. Besides it is better for the children to get used to writing their name using initial caps with lowercase which is more natural.

Once you type the name(s) in the dialogue box, click "OK" in the dialogue box. The hollow letters should appear on your document. You can drag the corners to stretch
it or shrink it. I like to place a few lines underneath for practice in writing on lines. I didn't do that on this one because I wasn't sure the students would be that advanced yet

I had to look on line for the hollow shapes to place beneath the lines. In PSD they were in the graphics collection.

Before laminating, I had to go over the lines in the name with a black felt tip pen.

On the photo you can see where the student used a red dry erase marker to trace his name inside the hollow letters and to trace the shapes. At the end of practice each child wipes the marker off with a paper towel so the card is ready for the next day's practice. Make sure ONLY dry erase markers are available for the students to write with on these cards.

Bias against blind book lovers

This story was sent to you by: Ms. Kathy

--------------------
Bias against blind book lovers
--------------------

By Marc Maurer

April 14 2009

I love to read, and I've been doing it ever since I was able. My wife is also an avid reader. But my wife and I are blind, and because I lead the Baltimore-based National Federation of the Blind, we have many blind friends. And although many of us read everything we can get our hands on, we can't get our hands on very much to read.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.blind14apr14,0,2676842.story

Visit baltimoresun.com at http://www.baltimoresun.com

Reading Rights!!!!

Here is a quoted paragraph from the web site. Please go to this site at http://www.readingrights.org/ and sign the petition.

As technology advances and more books move from hard-copy print to electronic formats, people with print disabilities deserve the opportunity to enjoy access to books on an equal basis with those who can read print.

People with print disabilities cannot effectively read print because of a visual, physical, perceptual, developmental, cognitive, or learning disability.

No Need for Greed

We Want to Read!

We represent 15 million Americans who cannot read print because of blindness, dyslexia, spinal cord injury, and other print disabilities. We include school children, the elderly, professionals, college students, returning veterans, and your neighbors, family members and friends. We want to buy books. We have fought very hard for many years to have equal access to technology and information. For the first time, now that the Amazon Kindle 2 offers text-to-speech, which will read a book aloud, we can purchase and enjoy books like everybody else. Sadly, the Authors Guild does not support equal access for us. The Guild has told us that to read their books with text-to-speech we must either submit to a special registration system (that not all may qualify for and that would expose disability information to all future eBook reader manufacturers) and prove our disabilities -- or pay extra. The Guild’s position is contrary to the principle of equal opportunity for all and discriminates against millions of people with print disabilities.

Please support us by joining our informational protests and Sign the Petition: We Want to Read.

Found this photo in my files and tried the "Reflections" widget on it.
This is my dad surrounded by grandkids and grandnephews. This was taken on his birthday July 31, 2005--two years before he passed away. He was very happy on that day! A family reunion was planned to coincide with his birthday. At that time he and my Aunt Carrie were the last of the fifteen siblings left. Aunt Carrie died about six months after this. She was not well enough to attend the reunion.

Both my parents were in education and my dad in particular was inspiration for being a teacher. He was a teacher, a principal and later a professor in education who taught teachers to teach. He also inspired a love of reading in our family. I couldn't help but get certified as a reading specialist on top of my degrees!

Words of the Day Part 7

Arsonist: (noun) A person who burns building on purpose. Sentence from a news story article: "Some of the California fires may have been started by arsonist." We also talked about how the suffix "ist" helps determine that this noun is a person.

Qualify: (verb) To fit by training skill or ability; trained. Terrance's sentence: "You do not qualify for this job." Obviously in different handwriting, possibly by the para on a day I was out for chemo.

Stymie: (verb) To block progress [The kids loved this word.] Christy's sentence: "He stymied her by not letting her throw the ball."

Words of the Day: Part 2

When my daughter was a baby I had my house labelled and I'd read to her everyday. By kindergarten, we had Words of the Day in a little file box. So your WOD cards do not have to be taped to the wall and destroy your paint job. Nor are WODs limited to a classroom.

By the middle of first grade she was illustrating the cards and we had expanded them to WOD sentence cards. Whenever her teacher sent home a new list of spelling words we'd have a sentence card for each new word. It was a fun project and not a chore. Any way, it worked because she was reading on a third grade level at the beginning of first grade.

Of course, my love of reading had to rub off. Each night as I read to her it was with expression which was how my dad used to read to us. The children in my daughter's third grade class liked for the teacher to call on her to read aloud because of her expressiveness.

With that said, here are two more WOD cards. These were from the beginning of the school year when the WOD came with the school's morning announcements.

Learning Braille Through Remote Learning

Some of the relatives, friends and teachers of my students have asked about learning braille. The active instruction at this site is no longer occuring but someone teaching him/herself can find this link useful:

http://www.brl.org/index.html

The photo is the hand of one of my elementary students reading the "Word Pizza." Over the printed definitions are braille labels. The student is matching the word on the clothes pin to the definition.