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The problem is that, aside from recommending that they follow principles of good typography and design in general, we are not exactly sure what to suggest.
Does anybody here have any ideas or links to resources around this subject?
--b
I strongly suspect that The American Foundation for the Blind [afb.org] may have some useful stuff.
Things to do:
choose a serif font
use a slightly expanded line height
use first-line indents for all paragraphs
mix blocks of text with bulleted lists where appropriate
indent and italicize block quotations
Things NOT to do:
never justify the paragraphs
never use large blocks of text or several paragraphs without breaking it up with an image insert or similar
never reduce margins below 1.25", or else people will start covering up parts of the text with their thumbs
I would start with basic sites on layout.
Font choice is one of the most important aspects.
Thanks for the responses and the link (I was just browsing around the CNIB [cnib.ca] website). But I think I probably wasn't explicit enough.
We've been building accessible sites here for a number of years already. We're quite well-versed in doing this job on the web, but obviously the web is fundamentally different in that the content can be extensively altered by either the user or the user-agent according to the users' needs.
In print, on the other hand, it's not an option to produce multiple versions of a document, and whatever version does get produced is not really changeable.
The principles of good design and typography I referred to earlier--for example using readable fonts at appropriate sizes, proper leading and kerning, suitable degrees of contrast between type and ground and in logos--are obviously the foundation to anything we can do for accessibility in print, but there is little information we've managed to find that's directed specifically towards designing in print for accessibility.
It's information beyond the basics of good design and type design that we're interested in. Anybody know of any resources like that?
--b
It's information beyond the basics of good design and type design that we're interested in. Anybody know of any resources like that?
Can you expand on what exactly you are looking for? Obviously not things that I listed, but moreso ... what? :)
Good ol' Jakob [useit.com] is always game for some pontification.
I ordered some tickets the other day that I will have to pick up at will-call. I wanted to print a confirmation in case there was any question when I pick up the tickets.
I clicked on the button for a "printer friendly" version of the confirmation.
It produced a "pop-up" window with a nice printer-friendly version of the confirmation.
But it was a pop-up window, which (at least in Firefox) has the menu omitted from the top of the window.
Doh! No way to print it! (No "print" on the context menu, at least in Firefox. Maybe there is in MSIE?)
Don't do this! It's not usable, let along accessible!
