I am a braille user and a transcriber. I think restaurant menus are something
where careful thought needs to go into how to make finding and reading quik.
Forget about following print for formatting. Here are a few things I like:
1. If the menu is more than 5 or 6 pages, consider creating a table of contents
at the beginning.
2. Use centered headings for things like Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Beverages,
etc. Centered headings are just faster to find when page scanning when you
don’t want to take an hour to figure out what to order.
3. Repeat the centered heading on line 25 for quick paging through a menu. Just
another way of skipping through quickly. (The current section or start of a new
section is set as a page footer.)
4. Formatting for food entries: Consider using 1-3 format, with the description
and price each starting on a new line within the entry in 3-3. That way,
everything is easy to identify at the left margin, considering that the menu
might be being read in a person’s lap with limited hand movement space.
5. I typically put section notes immediately after a heading in 1-1. Things
like “Burgers served with fries, soup, or salad. Yam fries may be substituted
....” Blank line, then the food items in that category in 1-3.
Just some ideas to consider.
Jean
From: Debby Lieberman
Sent: Friday, July 14, 2017 10:29 AM
To: ueb-ed@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ueb-ed] Re: Menu braille
To add to what Don wrote — In addition to collaboration with experienced
transcribers, feedback from braille readers is invaluable. Many don’t know
(and don’t care about) braille code rules, but they do know what formatting
makes something easy to follow or helps them locate something on the page.
Debby
On Jul 14, 2017, at 10:48 AM, Don Winiecki <dwiniecki@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
While I would be confident that most menus contain one or more types of
lists, in my experience there is no single proper format for an entire menu.
In fact I might hazard the statement that producing a usable and adequate
transcription of a relatively complex menu will require more skill and
professional judgment than nearly any other single brailling project.
While I suspect this is not helpful in response to the original question, I
see it as recognition that human creativity is still a critical aspect of this
work.
Gaining confidence and fluency when there are no clear right or wrong answers
requires ongoing collaboration with experienced transcribers, including sharing
examples and critiques of those examples.
With that in mind, is it possible to share parts of the menu you are
transcribing?
Best,
_don
On Jul 14, 2017, at 11:32 AM, MJ Williams <matthewjwilliams101@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
What sort of "menu"?
On 14/07/2017, Theresa Wyatt <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi,
Could you please confirm the format for braille for a menu please? I
think
it would be classed as a list according to the Australian Training Manual
2013 p176, that I have, and I cannot find it in the Rules of UEB 2013. Any
ideas please?
Teri
--
*T Wyatt*
