Design and Accessibility in Print and Digital Media (30-45 min)
What do you value about design? What about accessibility? Go to the readings to help you think through this. I’ll give you a few minutes to review. Let’s list them out on the board.
Or, probably better to do this design and accessibility qualities list on a Google Doc
*Stephanie Kerschbaum on image descriptions
To serif or not to serif?: Based on many studies, feels like the idea of serif or sans serif being better online vs. print is too simplisitic. It really doesn’t matter in older media, and matters even less now with better screen resolution, updated fonts, etc.
Group activity
Let’s see these at work in 4 different texts. I have already put you into 8 groups (just easier that way because 21 is a weird number for 8 groups). Each group will read their text in terms of design features or accessibility features that they think really stand out (or don’t) in the text.
Group 1, Soldiers and Sailors Museum Brochure-Design: Kendall, Nasrina, Eryn
Group 2, Soldiers and Sailors Museum Brochure-Accessibility: Alyssa M., Lindsey
Group 3, Greater Pittsburgh Literacy Council Brochure-Design: Todd, Jena, Eric
Group 4, Greater Pittsburgh Literacy Council Brochure-Accessibility: Lauren, Courtney
Group 5, PennDOT Construction Webpage– Design: Liam, John, Lia
Group 6, PennDOT Construction Webpage– Accessibility: Sydney, Alyssa V., Paige
Group 7, Pittsburgh Public Schools “Facts at a Glance” Webpage– Design: Helen, Ana
Group 8, Pittsburgh Public Schools “Facts at a Glance” Webpage– Accessibility: Shumeng, Connor, Maria
Next, the accessibility and design groups for the given text will join with each other to talk about what worked and didn’t, and how they might change the document to mesh good design principles with good accessibility features. If this text could be revised, how?
Answer this, too: Do revisions with design in mind and revisions with accessibility in mind ever clash? How? If not, why not?
Ok, let’s return to our list to see if we want to revise anything, especially related to differences in print and digital media.
For folks who didn’t have the print materials, here they are scanned so you can follow along:
Activity: Re-mediating Documents (30-45 min)
Let’s see if we can try our hand at making well designed and accessible texts across media. Your joined group is now tasked with planning to turn your brochure into an informational webpage or your informational webpage into a flyer or fact sheet (won’t do brochure, because that will probably take too much time). Think back to the activity we just did and our revised list of values about design and accessibility to help guide your sketch or “prototype” of the re-mediated document (e.g., Layout? Color? Images? Linked text?).
Once your plan is complete, if we have time, start to see if you can do “a thing.” We probably won’t have enough time to create a polished document, but perhaps you could start the process. Maybe you can configure the layout? Maybe you can insert textboxes? Maybe you can create multiple pages with titles?
Whatever it is, I want your group to start playing with the below options since you all will likely use some sort of software beyond Microsoft Word at some point this semester, and doing this in groups to start is a great way to learn and get your feet wet if you are not used to working with programs more focused on design elements:
Look at this brief Microsoft Publisher tutorial to get familiar with what you can do with that program. Play around with it, though, to get familiar. Pages, on Macs, also has a tutorial to check out if you’d prefer to work from that. PowerPoint can also be useful to design documents.
Here are some key functions for Publisher:
Insert -> Draw text box (allows you to write text on the sheet)
Right click textbook, select format text box -> can fill it with color or make lines around it visible and different colors.
Insert -> Shapes (pick shapes to place text or images into or use to make lines for borders)
Page Design -> Background (can choose colors and layouts for page background)
For the webpage, I’d recommend using WordPress.com since you are already somewhat familiar with that interface, but feel free to use any WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) platform (check out our resources page for more WYSIWYG options). Someone will need to create an account if no one in the group has one. This WordPress tutorial is brief and can give you the basics on getting started. Click around the left menu to see other helpful hints on that tutorial site.
Key functions:
Add media
Changing header sizes
Add page
Save draft
Let’s bring it all together. I want to spend some time thinking about not just design and accessibility in a vacuum, but also in terms of when we are using print or digital media. Let’s return to our list of values about design and accessibility one last time to see if we want to make any more revisions or bring up new questions.
Questions I had:
How do accessibility and design clash?
How do they do the same work?
What about sight and hearing disabilities?
What about color? Did the color theory article make you rethink anything about using color?
What about print and digital differences?
What about images or color taking on too much meaning? How do you guard against that?
Break (15 min)
Social Media Writing (20-30 min)
Guest lecture on social media writing
Copyright (10-20 min)
I know this will be something to come up as you start turning in your campaign pieces, so I wanted to address this.
Go to the WFP Resources page for more on copyright, to include lots of sites that provide images, sound recordings, video, and other stuff in the public domain or under creative commons license. What I wrote under images is useful, especially for using tables and graphs. under the Images header for more on this. To be safe, with tables or graphs, I recommend not simply cutting/pasting, because there is potential you are violating copyright. Instead, recreating the image and attributing the source is probably the best way to go.
My non-legal-expert attempt at breaking this down:
Fair use: something is under copyright but you think you can use it because you are commenting on, criticizing, or parodying the copyrighted work. Unless you can very clearly make this case, you probably shouldn’t chance it.
Creative Commons License: An alternative to copyright, where the creator has set certain conditions for the use of their work. CC does not mean anyone can use it for whatever they want. It only means that the creator wanted people to have more freedom with their creation than copyright allows, but may still require users to meet certain conditions (e.g., citation of the work, asking for permission). If those conditions are not met, there can be some sort of penalty.
Public Domain: The work was never copyrighted or the copyright has expired (something unlikely, because Mickey Mouse is the devil). Go ahead, get wild with how you use it. One thing to note: say you have the translation of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil…well he wrote that in the late 19th century so you can go nuts right? It depends. If the edition was copyrighted, that is itself a work, and thus you have to be careful. Always do your homework to make sure something is indeed in the public domain.
Open Access: This refers more to research. Anyone can use something that is open access for free or anyone can use it for free while meeting certain conditions (the latter sort is like Creative Commons)
What Sentences Can Do: An Example from Your Letters (15 min)
Probably won’t have time for this, but we didn’t last week and I didn’t want to forget about it! May have to push off again:
Thinking about syntax, punctuation, and sentence type as a way to change rhythms of your writing. Have some sentences from your letters this week that I wanted to talk about.
Admin. (5-15 min)
Bring in your in-progress campaign pieces next class. To mix it up and get different feedback, I’m going to assign new peer response partners. Just like before, you’ll have some opportunity to make some final revisions and turn in your draft the next day (2/28) by 11:59pm.
Next week, we’ll have another guest lecturer from my class last semester to come in to talk about working with sound recordings.
We are getting close to break! Make sure you have conducted your interviews and can start using them for contextual information and within your campaign pieces. Over break (or soon thereafter), I’m going to send you some notes on your provisional grade.