 Number 213 - February 2001 |
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| ELP: Extra Large Print on the Computer for the Visually Impaired | ||
| by Michael Gold, Los Angeles CS User Friendly Oct 2000 | ||
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As the world's population
grows older, more and more people have trouble reading normal text.
Schoolchildren with poor vision and seniors whose vision has declined
can turn to talking books, large print publications and various devices.
Now, there is an additional source of help. The Text-Key Division of M.
G. Harrington Co. will convert any text file or printed document into a
publication in very large type, up to 40 points, and save it on a
floppy disk or CD. Although designed for easy reading on a computer
screen, these documents can be printed in the large font format.
This service should enable many people with impaired vision to access publications that are now too difficult to read because the font size is too small. This firm has been preparing electronic publications for authors for a number of years. It can take either the hard copy of publications or electronic files, reformat the text and put it on floppy disks or CDs. Using the royalty-free Adobe Acrobat Reader software assures that the text can be viewed and printed on any PC without additional software. The publication will (sic) contains a search tool and links from its table of contents to specified pages The publication is reformatted using a large and easily read font. The text can be printed, or further enlarged on the screen up to 800%. All operations are from menus. Several things differentiate the Text-Key service from products now on the market: Other software that enlarges printed text is expensive, requires scanning equipment and only enlarges text. Unlike publications produced by most programs, Text-Key publications are specifically formatted for the vision impaired, so the user doesn't have to scroll from one side of the page to another. In addition to increasing the size of the type, Text-Key makes sure words are not cut off by the side of the screen. To read the text, one only moves up and down on the page. Some experiments have tried placing only one screen of text on a page so that no scrolling is required. The company wants to get more people to take advantage of its service. It would like to work with someone who has contacts in education or senior citizen organizations and is interested in this project. It hopes to find authors and publishers who will work with the company as it foresees using service for textbooks, manuals, directories, cookbooks, and short publications of every kind. Finally, Text-Key wants to assure prospective users that it does not consider this work to be a profit center. It expects to recover its costs, but just as importantly, it wants to spread the use of this technique for assisting people with impaired vision to read documents more easily. |
User Friendly Editor's Note:
Michael Gold is a partner in M.G. Harrington Go. which provides computerization services including litigation support, scanning and optical character recognition and electronic publications. If you are interested in learning more about this system or would like to work with Mr. Gold, you may contact him by phone at (310) 319-8321 or by e-mail at mgold2@Compuserve.com.
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Number 213 - February 2001
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Maybe we're
missing something here. In our copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader there is a
magnifying glass icon on the tool bar. Click on it and then move the
cursor over a page of text displayed on the screen and the magnifying
glass icon appears on the page. Click on the icon and you zoom in. That
is, the portion of the page that is displayed becomes a smaller section
of the page so that the text size gets larger. Click again and it gets
larger still. As the text gets too large for the column to be contained
within one screen, the lateral navigating bars (frames) appear to allow
scrolling from side to side, as well as up and down bars, which were
there to start with, for scrolling through the document. Right clicking
while the magnifying glass tool is active shows several percentage sizes
that can be selected. This capability, within the free Adobe Acrobat
Reader, seems to me to be adequate for viewing the screen even if you are visually impaired. Printing
hard copy with larger fonts, however, may require the touted software,
or some additional program which allows you to select specific portions
of the screen to print such as Compupic (~$40) or PrintScreenWorks
(~$30). However, saving the files in large font format seems to be
unique to the Text-Key software.