Hello everybody. I am Isabelle Robert, lecturer at the University of Antwerp. I will be your teacher twice in this unit. In the introductory video, you learned about the main types of access support. In this section, we will concentrate on access to visual information via the visual channel on the one hand and via the tactile channel on the other hand, namely information leaflets in large letters and information leaflets in braille. These two services are offered just before the performance. Some people with a visual impairment have a degree of usable vision left, which allows them to read texts in large letters. Others prefer or need to read braille. Let us start with large letters. Documents in large letters are called large-print, large-type or even large-font documents. Large-print actually refers to the formatting of a text document in which the typeface (or font) is much larger than usual, to help people who have low but usable vision. This means they can read the document by using handheld magnifiers for example. Large-print documents can be produced in-house, but the task can be outsourced as well. If you intend to produce large-print documents in-house, make sure you have good word processing skills. As you will see, it is relatively easy to use word processing software to modify a regular-print document and produce acceptable large print. However, you have to make sure the word processing software is used properly. Hence, these good word processing skills. What does that mean? It means that you have to follow the conventional techniques for formatting documents with a word processor. In other words, you should use the proper functions for page numbering, margins, line spacing, tabs, etc. When doing so, the proper coding in the word processor is used and this is important in two ways. First, to make the formatting consistent. Second, because software that is used to translate text into braille actually uses these standard word processing codes as well. So, to conclude, producing large-print does not mean using the photocopier to enlarge a document. There are a number of basic do’s and don’ts of word processing that you should take into account, such as using tabs instead of the spacebar or hard page breaks instead of the enter key. I assume that most of you will know these basics, but if those two examples do not ring a bell, please take a course in MS Word for beginners for example, or refer to page thirteen of the Guide to Making Documents Accessible to People Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired, produced by The American Council of the Blind. The link to this guide is included in the reading material of this unit. A few other guidelines for formatting and printing for large-print readers exist. In the reading material included in this unit, you will find five links to such guidelines. But there are probably similar guidelines in your mother tongue. In the next video we will talk about braille.
