Simple Everyday Accessibility: Reasonable #$@#$ Accommodations.

RantWoman is about to go on summer vacation for a few days. The destination is Tacoma; the occasion is an annual gathering of RantWoman's faith community, but the themes the world is owed a rant about are universal enough to post here.

One of RantWoman's themes of the week is everyday reasonable accommodations requests, the sort of requests that can make RantWoman's day MUCH more manageable with what RantWoman considers only modest effort on someone else's part.

This rant brought to you by the terms "reasonable accommodations" and "alternate formats," with extra credit / special honorable mention for the term "hearing aids.:"

RantWoman confesses, she is motivated in these lessons in vocabulary and technology, not only by her own needs, but also by the presence of people near and dear. Some people near and dear to RantWoman greet every request either by dismissing RantWoman's experience or by asking "why do you need..?" Others think complying with such requests is optional, that if they personally cannot accomplish something it does not need to be done, OR that it is reasonable for complacent retirees to deprive working age adults likely to hear such requests many times in their working lives of the opportunity to learn about such simple accommodations measures, even in a volunteer context.

Can anyone see why RantWoman is just a delight to be around sometimes?

Today's moments of Blindness Tourism on Planet RantWoman, with some actual practical hints thrown in.

RantWoman has figured out how to do headings. She has even used headings on a document she fully intends to post here but has not gotten posted. Now RantWoman gets to have a conversation with an otherwise wonderful editor about why headings within chapters of long documents (and even short ones) are so much nicer than having to flip back and forth to the Table of Contents if RantWoman wants to skip around while reading.

RantWoman has learned to request electronic copies of documents and handouts in advance. For a RantWoman summer event, RantWoman is HUMBLY grateful to have made such a request in a way that resulted not only in her having electronic access but also in lots of other people who might rather use devices than kill trees for printing also have access. Oh, and RantWoman made the request far enough in advance of the event that the requested items can be sent or found on a website and RantWoman SHOULD even be able to read, review, enjoy them.

Okay, and if those near and dear to RantWoman forget about the in advance part, one measure of RantWoman's appreciation for an occasion will be requesting things in email after the fact. That of course depends on RantWoman having a path to request the email, but hey, RantWoman cannot have everything.

Further tokens of today's journey
Thank you so much for asking how RantWoman sees.  times 2

1. RantWoman, you get around so well I forget you really cannot see. Tell me how you see.

You can probably see both of those things at the same time, yes? RantWoman can see one or the other but not both at the same time, and with fog and blur around the edges.

2. How the heck should RantWoman know what the general public can see in the world of projection and college auditoriums? Sometimes RantWoman can read Powerpoit projected. Sometimes RantWoman cannot. Not seeing can lead to snarky comments. RantWoman does pretty well about snarky comments anyway. Imagine a prize for "the highest jargon density per slide."

For this event, getting a copy of whatever you are going to project ahead of time by email would be way cool.

The more informative version.

Thank you so much for asking about what font to use for things that will be projected in some kind of college auditorium.

To be honest RantWoman did not know off the top of her head. But the search string

powerpoint font size for projection

yielded a variety of options.

Pretty much agreement: no font smaller than 24 pt. You can do this in Word too.

Here are a few links to get started.
https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-font-size-and-color-scheme-for-powerpoint-presentations

http://www.thinkoutsidetheslide.com/ten-secrets-for-using-powerpoint-effectively/

http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00125_How_big_should_text_be-_What-s_the_ideal_font_size-.htm

Now, let the fun begin.