[bookshare-discuss] Re: Format editing during validation

  • From: "Shelley L. Rhodes" <juddysbuddy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2005 12:29:43 -0500

I always try to reorganize the book to make it easier to use by someone who 
is trying to read it using the daisy or Braille files.  I have come to the 
conclusion.  if I was making this book accessible to a student who reads 
Braille at their "first medium" I would want it to be as complete and easy 
to understand as possible for that student, so that is what I strive for.

To do this.

I

Put title letters back together to make the title readable.
Put blank lines where they don't belong away, erase them.
remove junk characters that don't belong
Label photo captions as "caption"
Try to describe pictures if I have someone to help
remove extra headers and blank lines to make the book streamlined
Protect chapter titles and page numbers from stripping
Move sidebars to the bottom of the page, or to a location on the page where 
they can be read.
Fix foot notes if possible and put them at the bottoms of the page.
try to group all pictures together on a page if possible not always 
possible.

And do what ever else I can.

Like you I can't see the book so usually use my judgment on what is best to 
keep and what is best to nuke.  We want fairly close to the quality of the 
published book, but if tweaking the files to make them more accessible to 
our readers, our subscribers, I think is more important.

Kurzweil doesn't have a "keep exact view" and I am not sure if It did I 
would use it.

After all, if you did how would you read columns?

And with today's fancy formats and the like, even sighted people complain 
about the layout of some books.  If the text is there and on the pages it is 
supposed to be on, then I say some modifications are accessible.  I do not 
however move text to other pages to put "boxes together" as this is 
violation of the fundamental formatting of the book in my opinion.

Shelley L. Rhodes and Judson, guiding golden
juddysbuddy@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Guide Dogs For the Blind Inc.
Graduate Advisory Council
www.guidedogs.com

The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to
stare up the steps - we must step up the stairs.

      -- Vance Havner
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Captain357" <Captain357@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Bookshare-Discuss" <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2005 11:24 AM
Subject: [bookshare-discuss] Format editing during validation


Hi all,

  Bookshare's information on page format editing is pretty clear in the
validation instructions sent to new volunteers: do what you can and details
some specifics.  I was looking for additional information on this however.
Now, anyone who has done scanning knows that typically the finished scan can
have spaces between letters on the title page, blank lines between lines of
text, etc, and is most likely not a mirror image of the book.  That has been
my experience anyway.  From my days when I could see, I remember how the
average book is structured and formatted, and that is not how many of my
scans turn out.  Even when viewing in "exact view," (with "keep exact view"
set in scanning preferences and all options set to retain as much data as
possible) this still tends to be the case.  Okay, and let's assume that you
do get a perfect duplicate scan of the book, the publishers in making things
look their best (larger fonts and erratic spacing in titles and headers) are
problems for screen readers and I would think, problematic in the transition
from RTF to daisy.  That said, does anyone know what the ideal balance
between efficiency, speed of validating and quality, performance of the
daisy file would be?  In other words, how much can the automated RTF to
daisy program Bookshare uses to process daisy files, compile and compensate
formatting errors mentioned above into a great finished Book?  Should we be
striving in validation to keep spaces between sentences and letters to a
minimal?  Should paragraphs be indented?  Should we rework fancy visual
formats to a simpler, uniform style?  Then of course, those of us who are
blind can't look at the book to see how formatting appears so there is
guessing and assumption involved.  I've mentioned just a few specific
questions here to get my point across and hopefully I've done that.  Any
information that will give me a better idea of what is best and suggestions
for doing so is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

David





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