Creating Independence

For several years now most of my publishing efforts have been happily collaborative, laid out and designed by graphic designers, in partnership, and with great results! This summer though, I became interested-inspired-motivated to do as much of the design process as I could with accessible tools.

One of the issues for me is the complex layering of menus, options, and tools in the more popular layout products, whether web-based or not, free or for a cost. I am not as conversant as I would like to be with JAWS or other text to voice interfaces and their facility in addressing what is essentially a visual medium, lay out and design, is arguably not so good.

One other issue is independence. A core tenet of the independent living movement and disability rights is acknowledging interdependence and jettisoning an uninterrogated dependence. Making my own decisions and following through on the consequences is pivotal, even with the support of other people, technology, medical devices etc. Making decisions about support on a project by project basis increases my independence.

In practice, or in my practice, right now, what this means is that I'm using Google docs to write, lay out, and convert games for publication, whether printed, distributed as PDFs, or put out as EDocs. In terms of support, I found a template and font hierarchy that fit the project and adjusted it with the support of a designer. The questions and feedback I got from them generally had to do with visual questions around color, spacing, and the interplay of visual elements, all of which are currently difficult or impossible for me to navigate. One temptation was to share the document and allow another person to make those changes or adjustments. That would make things easier, but could I do it myself? The answer was generally yes, or to find a workaround that allowed me the level of Independence I desired.

For these particular projects, mini campaigns for Mausritter, It also meant making some design decisions, especially around art. The theme of the project, or projects as it turned out, happily, lent itself to a low level of need for art, except on the item cards, which I may write about later. The process allowed me to use dictation and my phone as the primary tool, and a laptop for some of the points where the mobile interface did not suffice. It has been a grand experiment and I feel like it is pushing me in directions I might not have otherwise tackled!