@StarTreker and @swarfendor437 will be pleased.
@StarTreker and @swarfendor437 will be pleased.
I'm not only pleased, but I also learned something! ![]()
I've had bad vision since I was a kid. Once I was in high school, I was forced to wear glasses, cause I couldn't read a chalk board, dry erase board, or the overhead projector. Kids who had better vision, never knew what I was going through.
I love Comic Sans so much, it looks wonderful, and its easily readable. ![]()
My very first RNIB course I attended not long after starting my job as a Vision Support Technician was the introduction to Comic Sans as an alternative to Arial, and additionally to look at using cream coloured paper as opposed to using white. Sadly my manager was insistent that Arial should be the only font used.
My fellow technician enjoyed modifying French Language books which used green and red coloured fonts which emphasised specific words as in the original. After 2 years in the job she made the unilateral decision to stop this practice so that all text should be in black typeface.
Now for emphasised words Italics was a no-no, so when I started out, emphasised words would be in Arial Bold. Further down the line we were told we had to prepare texts in nothing but Arial Bold. This meant we had to think of how to deal with emphasised words in the original text so we first looked at using all capitals and also making emphasised words 2 pts larger than the student's assessed readable font size.
What is ironic, is the Department like other School Integrated Resources around the country, were named Vision Impairment Departments. She surveyed the students about the title. They felt it emphasised students visual condition, and a very smart student suggested Vision Support, emphasising it reflected what the Department did and not on the students' vision conditions. So she sensibly adopted it. After she took retirement, things changed for the better with students able to choose their preferred fonts.
I was extremely surprised that in my last couple of years working from home one student preferred Calibri, which I find awful. At the end of the day, what is crucial is what works for the individual should be adopted. At the end of the day you want (you would hope) them to succeed in all areas.
Kerning is something I had to use a lot, particularly for Primary (Elementary) students. If you look at early years reading books they are (in the UK) in a Sans Serif font with double spaces between words. The biggest kerning size I had to use was 3 pts. Now only LibreOffice used pts in Kerning settings (the spacing between letters). Now SoftMaker's Text Maker uses % for kerning. My solution? I would type "The quick brown fox" in LibreOffice using kerning spacing for a student, then copy and paste the text into TextMaker, open kerning settings to read the percentage it was set to. This way I knew if I got a work request for certain kerning requirements I just had to apply the percentage needed.
One of the last difficult jobs was to make an enlarged floor plan for a College Student. It had to be on green paper, so I colour picked the scanned copy of the original plan on pale green paper and applied it to the enlarged A3 floor plan.
However, not all things improved with one QTVI (Qualified Teacher for Vision Impaired) trying to force a college student to use JAWS when they preferred NVDA; thankfully the Teaching Assistants supporting the student facilitated their continuation of using NVDA. They also used a European Braille Machine, a Tetrapoint instead of an American Printing House Perkins Braille machine.
Once any student deteriorated to needing a higher font size of 48 pts, they were then introduced to Braille.
It was an interesting point raised about Open Dyslexic font not accessible to some Dyslexic readers in the video. The font was actually created by someone with Dyslexia. Again, like everyone, we are not all the same, each individual should not only have the choice of font, but they should be made aware of others. I remember one student preferred Gothic Font, but partly suspect because they were influenced as a teenager by Goths. I do like the URW Gothic Demi font. And I like the Asenine Font, just wish it was heavier. For youngsters we used Primary Font for text and Primary Cheynes for numbers; a straight number one (l), rounded three (3), open four (
Going back to Comic Sans I could not be bothered to use MS Core Fonts for my eldest when I donated a Dell Latitude that had been gifted to me from my employer, as I have had experience of dross being left over in GNU/Linux after 'removing' them; this is another reason why I installed MX-Linux KDE Plasma with Font Manager it was easy to install the MS Comic Sans font, apply it to the whole system, change TextMaker to be inverted as with her Lupus condition worsening, she prefers white on black background. It took a lot of work to get Evolution setup this way but I succeeded.
Sadly she has had to give up her job, her absences were increasing and the new Headteacher was about to put her through the incapability process so she resigned. It is frustrating as a parent that there is nothing you can do. What is worse is our current Government has passed legislation that future benefits claimants who have a condition like my eldest will not receive the same level of benefits.
She wrote a story for the very young at the school where she worked to explain about Covid-19. The then Headteacher had been very supportive, and was so impressed by the story he told my eldest he was submitting it nationally to the Headteachers of Primary (Elementary) Schools.
[Footnote: I tried to add additional space between end of one sentence and start of another on this post, but Discourse had other ideas!
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I think Comic Sans suffered from being way to overused during the early days of the internet, which made it look childish and unprofessional. I've seen many company guidelines where the use of it was strictly and explicitly forbidden when printing company documents and presentations.
Personally, I don't like it, but I think it's time people give it a well-deserved second chance.
Like I said in my post it is an easier font for people who are print-disabled. There is another font that the RNIB recommend for screen use and that is the Segoe font.
Having looked at this:
perhaps they were giving donations from you know who to support it. That said apparently MS spent millions to get a readable font, let down by outlines on picture backgrounds which is why a plain colour background removes the shadows/outlines.
I prefer Segoe compared to Comic Sans. FWIW.
Letcs not forget Comic Relief. I think that is one thing Team Zorin got right.