Kevin Carey

Size Counts: The Significance of Size, Font and Style of Print for Readers with Low Vision Sitting Examinations

This Paper is based on a study commissioned by the Royal National Institute for the Blind (Aitken, S., Ravenscroft, J., Buultjens, M. & Carey, K., 1998)1 which examined the effects of font, size and styles of print for students with low vision undertaking examinations such as GCSE, A Levels and Highers in the UK. It confirmed the importance of individualisation in these matters and identified that font, size and style affect speed and accuracy. The study raised important issues for those presenting students for examinations and for examination boards with respect to adapting and modifying print papers. Helvetica N24 plain text emerged as the most generally accessible font, size and style.

Who needs literacy

The author spent three years in the Caribbean and almost two years in East Africa before taking up his present position at the Societys UK Headquarters. He was educated at a residential school for the blind before being integrated into a standard school at secondary level and has, therefore, seen educa tion for the blind both as a consumer and as an administrator. This article has been written from a personal viewpoint in the hope that it will generate fruitful discussion. It challenges the effectiveness of the models of education of blind children generally adopted in Commonwealth Africa and questions their relevance for a largely agricultural society.

The pain and pleasure of travel

The author, who once enjoyed enough residual vision to make pictorial imagination possible even though he is totally blind now, says that preparation is essential for travel; and then finds that it is not enough. The contributions of factual reading, of historical knowledge, and of imagery and imagination to the enjoyment of travel are all evaluated and reflected upon.

Visual impairment and the creative process: proposals for the digital age: Edited version of keynote lecture, Mary Kitzinger Trust Conference, 2006

To consume is human; to create is divine. There are two fundamental theories about creativity, the Platonic and the Aristotelian. Put simply, the Platonic theory says that every earthly object is an imperfect representation of a perfect object or archetype, a position which condemns all acts of creativity to inevitable shortcoming. The Aristotelian theory, on the other hand, may broadly be summed up in the maxim: ‘The whole is more than the sum of the parts’ and, therefore, honours creativity, no matter how halting. In the nature of humankind, it is the Platonic challenge that has goaded creators to aspire to the perfect, to aspire to the divine, and, in doing so they have imposed a massive weight of expectation upon creativity itself. In this sense, creativity is viewed as a self-conscious representational act where the artist personifies the culture and extends or disrupts the tradition. It is the composer living in the shadow of Beethoven that must decide whether to extend symphonic rhetoric or find a new path; it is the novelist after Proust who must decide whether the novel as he wrote it can be extended or whether the only alternative is synoptic; it is the painters after Millet who must decide whether realism has reached such a conclusion that a break out into fundamentalist symbolism is the only route out of the impasse.

The colour of sound and the soundness of colour

Reflections upon a new RNIB publication on the work of six visually impaired artists, upon a BBC radio documentary programme on the relationship between sound and colour, and upon a visit to the Hayward Gallery to see an exhibition of Paul Klees paintings. The paper sets out the writers own aesthetic responses to visual works of art, and presents an argument that the visual arts should have a much higher profile in the education of visually impaired children.

The Real Goals for Mobility Education

The following is an edited version of a presentation made to the Mobility and Independence Specialists in Education (MISE) Conference in Coventry on 7 March 2000.

A Method for the Measurement of Error Rate in Braille Transcription

A combination of factors led in the early 1990s to the perceived need for a method of measuring error rate in braille transcription in such a way that it could be included in contracts between consumers and producers. The United Kingdom Association of Braille Producers (UKABP) designed a Standard 1.0 which comes into force on 1 July 1997 and will be reviewed in November 1998.