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AMAC Manual of Accessible Style [DRAFT 1.0]
Introduction
The purpose of this manual is to illustrate how the different features found in printed textbooks can be converted to a format that is accessible and usable by students with print related disabilities. Some conversions are straightforward, some can be difficult, and some exceed the capabilities of current technology. Adding to the challenge is that students have different types of assistive technology and levels of experience.
The goal of a conversion to alternative format is to be as faithful as possible to the original, but there are always areas requiring the judgment and discretion on the part of the person performing the conversion. While most situations can be resolved by considering the reader's needs, knowledge of the subject, and common sense, these guidelines will be help ensure an overall consistency.
At the present time, most conversions are performed by non-profit agencies, school personnel, small specialty vendors, and sometimes the students themselves. They use a range of techniques to create a variety of formats, but the common thread is that they are working with a book that is already in print. In the future, we expect more of this work will be undertaken by publishers before a book is published, resulting in greater equality for students with disabilities. We hope the information presented here will be useful in this regard.
Student Needs
There are two major types of print disabilities. The first involves vision difficulties and impairments - students who are blind or have limited vision. These students may use braille, magnification, audio, or some combination of all three. The second group is classified as having a learning difficulties and impairments. For the purposes of providing access to textbooks, this can be described as one or more conditions, such as dyslexia, that impairs the student's ability to comprehend text in printed form. These students may use strategies such as audio and word highlighting in order to fully access the content of their books.
While there are similarities between the groups, it is recognition of the differences that leads to the most successful conversions of printed materials in to a format usable for the individual student. Students with learning disabilities have visual access to their books, and may only use the alternate format to assist with their comprehension of the text, while students who are blind may rely entirely upon the alternate format – any information that is not included in the alternate version will be inaccessible to them. It should also be noted that some visually impaired students may prefer the materials in ‘large print’, in which the book is reprinted in enlarged format. The amount of enlargement depends on the students needs and the type of material in the book.
Reading with Learning Disabilities
Students with learning disabilities may rely upon software that accommodates for their unique reading needs. Several popular programs can highlight text on the screen while reading it aloud using synthetic speech. These programs can often preserve the visual presentation of the printed book, while providing additional features to aid the reader. When converting a book to be read by a student with a learning disability, it is helpful to know the program they will be using to read the text. Some programs are optimized for certain file formats, while some provide a ‘toolbar’ that works with a variety of formats and can be used in conjunction with other programs.
Some students may prefer that the entire book be converted to audio format and provided as MP3 files, downloaded or on a CD, that can be played on an MP3 player or CD player. This format is similar to what a visually impaired student may request, but without additional description of graphic elements in the book. There are also programs that can convert text to speech ‘on the fly’, so some students may simply request a text file, which they will listen to using their own software.
Reading with Visual Impairments
Students who are blind may request materials in braille, which is a touch-based system that involves transcribing the material and then printing it on an embosser. Embossed Braille is a close analog to printed text, in that words are written out on a physical page, and is usually the preferred method of reading by those students who have learned it. Also, technology has been developed to provide automated transcription, and portable reading devices can be used in place of bulky embossed paper volumes.
At the present time, producing a Braille version of some college textbooks may take more time than is practical for the student to wait and still be able to keep up with their assignments. In such cases, students may request that materials be provided in audio format, or in an electronic text format that they can use with software installed on their own computer, such as a screen reader. These files are similar to those provided to students with learning disabilities, but, depending on the book, descriptions may be required for information that is presented in graphics and illustrations.
Students who have visual access to the text but require it to be enlarged may use a screen magnifier, and optical magnifier, enlarged print, or audio, depending on their own needs and the type of material they need to read. Large print materials are most effective when they can be customized to a student’s particular needs, which involves choosing the right font, font size, and possibly font colors, to increase the visual contrast.
Principles and Practices for Alternate Formats
When converting an existing textbook or other material to an alternate format there are several important principles to keep in mind:
- Converting information from one format to another is never a trivial task, and care should be taken to ensure the final product is as close to the original as possible
- There is not always one ‘correct’ way to convert some types of information, so it may be necessary to add producers’ notes to the material to clarify how certain material is being presented.
- Some material, by its nature or due to the current state of technology, may not be satisfactorily presented in an alternate format to persons with some disabilities. In such cases it remains between the student and their instructor to work out the most appropriate accommodation – the producer of the alternate format cannot replace the role of the instructor.
- The student is responsible, and held accountable through assessment, for their own interpretation and understanding of instructional material, so the alternate format must not distort the meaning of the text, or add information the author did not provide. When there are errors in the printed text, they should be transcribed with a producer’s note indicating only that they were transcribed ‘as written’.
In practice, creating an alternate format is sometimes like translating from one language to another. While it is obviously important to fully understand the language of the source document, it is also essential to have a command of the idioms of the language of the reader. When translating from print to audio, certain ‘taken for granted’ conventions of the printed page must be made explicit to be understood when presented aloud. For example, some books print page numbers at the top of the page and some at the bottom, but an audio presentation should consistently indicate the page number at the start of each page.
DRAFT section on Commonly Encountered Electronic Formats
Kurzweil PDF Word DAISY
With that in mind, these guidelines are presented to address the most common situations encountered in producing an alternate format for a college textbook.
Navigating the Book
The first issue to be considered in preparing an alternate format is that college textbooks average five hundred pages, with many going over one thousand, and some medical books and literary anthologies topping two thousand pages. It is essential that alternate formats provide a method for the reader to easily move to any point in the book and start reading.
Table of Contents
All printed books of any significant size contain a table of contents showing the major divisions of the book and any subdivisions the reader is meant to be aware of, with page numbers given for items listed in the contents. The contents usually give an indication of the structure and hierarchy of a book, with unit or chapter headings in large or bold print, subsections in smaller print. In electronic format, the function of the table of contents can be replicated in different ways.
PDF files can have Bookmarks, which may be used to take the reader directly to any point in the file. One advantage of PDF Bookmarks is they are always available in a side window when reading the file using Adobe Acrobat. Bookmarks can also be ‘nested’ to indicate the hierarchy of chapters and subheadings.
DAISY allows for the creation of a sophisticated ‘navigation control center’, where the table of contents is represented by tags similar to hyperlinks on a web page. The producer can even mark up more detailed navigation points if the text warrants it. DAISY is designed to take full advantage of the structure of a printed book, and is only limited by the time and effort of the producer, and the capability of the ‘playback’ system used by the reader.
In all cases, the important consideration is that the reader should have a simple method to refer to the contents at any time, and then go directly to any point listed in those contents. This can be referred to as ‘structural navigation’, in that it refers to the unique parts of the book. Readers should also be able to go directly to any specific page in the book, which can be referred to as ‘physical navigation’ or ‘random access’. In this case, the reader should be able to enter a page number and have the reading system take them to the top of that page and begin reading.
While these features simulate the kind of navigation possible with a printed book, it is important to note that electronic files have some limitations, and some advantages, over print. One limitation is the difficulty in skimming quickly through a file the way one might flip pages in a book, but this may be compensated for by the ability to search electronic text by keywords or phrases.
Navigating the Page
In textbooks, the author and book designer often arrange information on a page, or sometimes using a two-page spread, in such a way that the reader is given options as to how they want to navigate the page. There is usually the main text, which may be mixed with supplementary text, which is set-off from the main text using boxes, or sidebars, or various other means. Sometimes the main text disappears for a page or more, resuming after the interruption right where it left off, even in the middle of a sentence.
This creates a challenge for the producer of an alternate format. While one of the primary goals of the producer is to represent the material faithfully as it appears on the page, there are going to be instances where the page itself is not the most logical reading division. In these cases, it may be necessary for the producer to insert notes, similar to those found in magazines, indicating when the main text has been interrupted, and when it resumes.
This is very important for readers who will be relying upon the alternate format as their sole means of accessing the textbook independently. It would be disconcerting for the text to be interrupted in mid-sentence by the contents of a textbox, only to resume without notice a number of paragraphs later. This is less of an issue in files being provided to students who can access the material visually, as the assumption is that they will be able to follow the direction of the text using the context given in the printed book. There are different ways of handling this problem depending on the format being used. The Kurzweil software has a method for indicating reading order on a page by ‘zoning’ the page and assigning a number to the zones, representing the order in which the material will be read.
Kurzweil also has a means to mark certain text areas as ‘secondary’ text, which are not read aloud unless the reader selects them. DAISY has a method by which text can be tagged as ‘required’ or ‘optional’, in which case the reader would be able to skip it without hearing it read. Those relying on the alternate format should be given an indication of any elements on the page that might be of interest to them, even when that breaks up the logical flow of the main text. The instructor may refer to a particular sidebar or textbox and the reader should be able to find it in the alternate format text.
Illustrations and Tables
Most textbooks contain at least a few graphics, while some are almost all graphics. While some illustrations are purely decorative, most are there to convey information and need to be described for readers who cannot see them. The description should be sensitive to the context of the text, providing enough information but not too much. A good description does not repeat information that is given in the caption or the main text.
In some books, there may be so much information given in the figures that the subject matter is not easily comprehensible without extensive description. One example would be a book on a graphics editing program containing numerous illustrations of a computer screen. It may not be practical to describe all of the information in the book in a way that is useful to a student who does not have visual access to the material. In this case the producer should provide as much information as possible while noting figures and illustrations that are not going to be fully described.
Tables are a common way of displaying information in textbooks, and they present their own unique challenges to producers and readers of alternate formats. One reason it is important that students have access to information in tables is that instructors may ask the student to compare the data in a table and draw out trends or other conclusions based on the data.
The student will need to conceptualize the relationship between the data which is displayed in cells of the tables rows and columns. The JAWS screen reader has commands specifically for reading tables, such as moving from cell to cell and reading the row and column headings. This will only work if the table has been properly tagged in the electronic file.
Reading the Text
The heart of most textbooks, carrying the author’s message, is the main text. It is critical that this text be converted to alternate format completely and accurately. But it is important to note that text itself may contain features the author used to add depth to the information, such as
- Emphasized typography – bold and italics, colors, changes in font, underlining, sometimes indicating glossary terms or other keywords.
- Line numbers in poems, plays, and text to be edited.
- Superscript, often used to indicate a footnote or endnote.
- Acronyms and abbreviations that may be spelled out or pronounced as words.
Mathematics
Mathematical notation is in a category by itself, ranging from commonly used symbols that may be interspersed with the main text, to pages of formulas and equations with little or no text.
