Media & Disability
Guide on media & disability
Working with People who are Blind/Visually Impaired
People with visual impairments use a range of mobility strategies – white stick, guide dog, hard won experience – and they vary enormously in degree and type of impairment. Many visually impaired people do have some vision, which can vary according to available light levels.
- It’s always best to ask if assistance is needed, rather than assume. If you are asked to guide someone, offer your arm rather than grabbing theirs; usually you’ll need to walk a little ahead, and warn of oncoming hazards such as steps or street furniture – this sounds obvious but forgetting to mention an upcoming kerb, step or bollard is easily done.
- If the blind person is accompanied by a guide dog, make sure there is space for the dog to be comfortable, a toilet place and check if the dog needs water.
- Visually impaired people may also use a range of aids to assist them in the office and on location – for example, screenreaders and voice recognition software for computers, large monitor on location/in the edit. A blind person might also need a dedicated assistant to accompany them, so remember to add a line in the budget to cover any potential extra travel costs if necessary.
Your First Contact with a Visually Impaired Person
Phone calls or emails are good for initial contact. If you are giving information such as contact numbers or directions to a meeting place over the phone, don’t rush - a visually impaired person might need a bit more time to write it down or record it. Email allows visually impaired people to set their own text size.
Alternative accessible communication formats
These formats include Braille, large print, audio cassette, computer disk and tactile drawings. With any alternative formats, it is unlikely there will be a big demand. It is therefore better to advertise that material can be made available on request, because this would obviously be much more cost effective.
Braille
Braille is used mainly by people who were born blind. This is actually a very small percentage (approximately 5%) of the visually impaired population. Most blind people who use Braille do not necessarily expect to be supplied with Braille versions of text. You could provide a version via computer instead which can be accessed by voice recognition software, or the blind person will create their own Braille version
Large Print
The size recommended is 14pt. However, if possible ask what would be suitable. Experience shows that many visually impaired people use 16pt or larger. Most large print material can be generated on your computer with very little effort. If, however, your programme is producing glossy publicity material, then you will need to get your designer to produce a comparable large print version as an alternative that need not be in the same glossy materials. If you handwrite anything, try to use a dark felt-tip pen and clear, broad strokes.
Audio Recorded Access to Print
If specifically requested, printed material can also be provided on audio cassette or disc. Think carefully about what kind of document it is before you record it. Obviously the more complex the material, the longer it will take, so allow sufficient time. Audio recordings can be made with bleeps at intervals to indicate chapter beginnings or any reference point when fast-forwarding. This is called tone indexing and should be used in all but very short documents. Anything that is meant to be read and enjoyed by a sighted person should be taped with a human voice for a hearing impaired person, but sometimes very short documents are produced using an electronic voice.
Computer access to print
If you are producing an information leaflet yourself on the computer, remember it is easy to print it in a large sans serif font. Advertise that you have a large print version available. It is even easier to e-mail the document as an attachment. You can also provide material on a computer disk to allow people to either print it out themselves or get it to speak to them via talking software.