Book designers and publishers need to ensure that text is well spaced, covers are attractive and sensory elements included to make books more accessible the Edinburgh International Book Festival has been told.
Among a vast array of presentations for the book publishing element of the Edinburgh’s annual celebration of culture a panel on the Accessibility of Books stood out. Panellists were asked what they should do to help those that want to read books but who face difficulties in accessing them or those that find their stories are not covered by mainstream publishing.
Barrington Stoke publishing director Ailsa Bathgate said the key was to give those with difficulties access to the authors that their peers are also reading. “We don’t want them to look like some reading scheme that you feel different. We work really hard on our covers so they look fantastic,” she said.
The company had started 25 years ago to publish books for those with dyslexia. Around one in ten of the population suffers from dyslexia to some extent she said. It commissioned its own font, not completely unlike Comic Sans, but with each letter form having a serif and being completely unique.
“We never compromise on quality and it’s just that way of inviting everybody in. We encourage teachers to see these books as class reads. They’re not for the struggling reader, they’re for everybody,” Bathgate told the audience.
After commissioning an author to a write a shorter story than normal, the text is examined word by word to identify those that less able readers might struggle with. Then design takes over. Text is set in its own font where the serif helps give shape to words; letterforms are distinctive to avoid confusion; paragraphs are spaced out on the page.
The publisher also uses a thicker paper to avoid any risk of show through and print on papers which tainted from a cream off white to yellow, so avoiding the glare than can arise from black text on a bright white page. “The paper is more expensive,” she said.
Bathgate had been preceded by Ailie Finlay who had set up My Kind of Book for teachers and parents and children with complex educational needs.
She had noticed that educators had covered up parts of illustrations to make them less busy, had enlarged the text, in short “almost new individual versions of a book for each pupil in the class”.
The project had published a book that includes what she called stage directions for actions that the storyteller can perform to engage the children more. Ultimately she said: “We want to convince other people to make these kinds of books.”
