Editor's Note: This article includes two separate book reviews, Designing Documents for Appearance by Judy Dixon and The Beauty of Dusk by Frank Bruni. Each review is noted by a level 2 heading for navigation.
Designing Documents for Appearance by Judy Dixon
Deborah Kendrick
One irony in the world of technology with regard to blind users is that some functions were easier for us in technology’s earlier days, simpler to master in the days when the personal computer in the home or office was a new and much less sophisticated phenomenon than they are three or four decades later. A striking example of this irony is the task of creating and controlling the physical appearance of a document.
In 1990, with DOS and WordPerfect, creating a document that was visually appealing wasn't easy if you couldn’t see the screen, but it was certainly quite manageable. Technology has exploded exponentially and most of that growth is amazingly positive for all of us. The multitude of choices, however, and the ribbons and dropdown menus for utilizing them, well, let's just say it adds up to a pretty complicated virtual landscape. If you haven’t designed any flashy brochures, invitations, or even term papers lately, because all that style stuff in Windows is just too daunting, well, you are not alone in the blind computer user community!
But we all know that there is always a way, a work-around or set of work-arounds to do a visual thing that presents itself as impossible And if there is one author among us with the patience and talent to find that virtual way and lay it out sequentially for the rest of us, it is Judy Dixon. She showed us how we could take pictures and be proud of them. And now, in her latest work for National Braille Press, Judy Dixon presents a guide for making documents that communicate visually as well as contextually. Her newest book from National Braille Press, Designing Documents for Appearance:
Using a Screen Reader to Create Eye-Catching Newsletters, Flyers, Invitations, and More, will guide you through the components needed to create documents that have eye appeal even when the person creating them can’t see the screen.
What’s in the book
In just eight chapters and three appendices, (one braille volume), you’ll get step-by-step explanations of the various components of designing a document with eye appeal. You’ll learn how to set margins, change fonts, and make bulleted lists. You’ll learn how to print on paper of varying widths and lengths, and how to make use of templates. You can learn how to create tables or columns or text boxes that are set apart from the body of your document.
The book provides technical information and step by step instructions, but the language is always conversational enough that the technical and not-so-technical alike will find it useful and usable.
If you have ever wanted to produce a flyer to post on your community bulletin board or an invitation to your next birthday party, this book will help you sort out how to get the job done. And if, like most of us, you only have occasional needs to produce a document that has a unique layout of any kind, this book will enable you to find again those steps you maybe once knew and have forgotten. You will want to read it once straight through (it’s a small book), and then keep it handy for quick reference. The table of contents makes it easy for you to locate that one particular feature or function needed to produce a particular size, shape, or style of document.
Have you wondered how to get a wavy line ~~~ or broken line onto the page? Do you want to produce a tiny booklet and have the margins on both pages be the same distance from the center fold? These are the kinds of questions that will send you dipping into this book for answers.
The three appendices alone make the book well worth its price and will prompt you to keep it close. They are compilations of keyboard commands used in navigating and creating documents, one appendix each for commands used in Jaws, NVDA, and for Microsoft Word itself.
Designing Documents for Appearance: Using a Screen Reader to Create Eye-Catching Newsletters, Flyers, Invitations, and More is available in hardcopy Braille (one volume), or electronic formats. Order online at www.nbp.org, or call (800) 548-7323.
The Beauty of Dusk by Frank Bruni
Steve Kelley
“For all our claims and gestures of dominion over the earth, all our gravity-defying explorations beyond it, all our artistic triumphs, all our athletic feats, we are a breakable species, and the fissures are all around us. We just stare through and past them, or at least too many of us do.” As a result, Frank Bruni suggests, in his recent memoir, “The Beauty of Dusk,” too many of us may miss the subtle beauty in the waning light at day’s end. Bruni’s latest book explores his own first glimpses of the evening’s fading light, unexpectedly, and suddenly, with an ocular stroke in one eye. The loss of vision that resulted, and its impact on so many areas of his life inspired Bruni’s musings on the transitions we may all suddenly encounter, in our own lives, with little warning. “And it’s about how paradoxical, enriching and beautiful that dusk can be. My world blurred, but it also sharpened. I held my breath; I exhaled. I said hello to new worries; I said goodbye to old ones.” Anyone with onset vision loss, or other life-changing event, for that matter, will recognize much of what Bruni describes—denial, grief, hours spent chasing down and undergoing treatments with the hope of a reversal, the unknown world we then find ourselves in, and the many changes this is apt to bring with family, friends, career, and self-esteem. Throughout the book, Bruni is able to candidly share the vulnerability he experienced. And perhaps more importantly, how his blurred sight sharpened his vision of the future and his ability to find beauty in the unexpected.
“Coping can be incremental and sequential. It’s less daunting that way.”
Coping for Bruni appears to be a process of reframing, redefining the waning light at the end of the day as its own beginning, a transition which may not, at first, be welcome, but nonetheless containing gifts to be discovered.
Bruni recounts meeting a career diplomat from Mexico, Juan Jose, and a conversation with him about his work and life with retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a genetic disease that caused his blindness before the age of 40. Jose is matter of fact about many of his experiences, describing both the barriers of vision loss, and some of the opportunities it presented throughout his life. Bruni suggests the following moral:
“While we have minimal control over the events that befall us, we have the final say over how we regard and react to them.”
It was unclear from the book if Bruni’s “sandwich board theory,” was something that evolved from his own self-observation, or if it was something he held before his stroke. In this personal theory he suggests that we might all be better off if we adorned a sandwich board with a list of the challenges and trials we’ve endured throughout our lives, so we might have more empathy and compassion for those around us, as we read about their scars we might not otherwise see.
The Beauty of Dusk is ultimately a book of hope—a hope that appears with some nurturing, and often as a result of unexpected events we are unprepared for, like a sudden vision loss. It is a book you’re likely to return to again and again as you make your way along an unexpected journey, determined to find the beauty in it that might, all too easily be missed, or overlooked.
This article is made possible in part by generous funding from the James H. and Alice Teubert Charitable Trust, Huntington, West Virginia.
