Devon County Council

Guidelines

The following are guidelines for formatting text in order for it to be read by screen readers or computer speech packages. Because different technologies read text in different ways, these are just general guidelines.  

If the user (and the technology they use) is known, then the transcription can be made much more specific to their requirements.

• Make the first line of the document the title.
• A contents listing should follow this for longer documents.
• The person / organisation producing the transcription should be referred to, either within the file or on a separate 'read me' file.
• Text should be left aligned.
• Each paragraph should be marked by a blank line before it, to allow people to search for a blank line or two hard returns to skip through the paragraphs.
• Don't rely on bold, italic or bold formatting for headings as most screen readers won't be set to alert people to this:
  • For speech software mark the beginning of each section (or article, form etc.) with a hard page break and two plus signs (++). These two plus signs could be searched for.
  • More recently, with the increased use of MS Word and screen readers / magnification packages, people are increasingly likely to use the automatic table of contents facility that will allow them to navigate directly to a particular section. These files will need to be WORD files, and the style option needs to be used to indicate each new heading. Page breaks will also help. Increased font size and bold may help distinguish headings.
  • Ultimately, it’s best to ask the client what computer software they use.
• Bullets and numbered lists should be removed, as older versions of screen readers have problems with these.
• Avoid text boxes - text from text boxes should be removed and placed in the main document.
• Set the 'zoom' (how much you see on the screen) to page width.
• Make sure the font colour for all text is 'automatic'. We default all font to 14 point Arial.
• Symbols may create problems.
• Most forms are produced used the 'table option'. The newer screen readers can cope with tables, but it is better to remove the table format and present forms using a line by line format.
• Flowcharts also need to be transcribed into paragraph form.
• Page numbers are not usually given, although in some transcriptions a print page reference may be used. We indicate print pages where that is relevant, within square brackets, right justified.
• The 'end of file' is marked as such.

Contact for more guidance:

• Pip Harris
  RNIB Transcription Centre South West
  2 Whiteoak's Court
  David's Lane
  Ivybridge
  Devon PL21 0DW
  
  Tel. 01752 690092
  e-mail ivytcsw@rnib.org.uk