A few dyslexia [font-related] resources

For the list on the OpenDyslexic’s Related Research page (https://opendyslexic.org/about-2/related-research/), the ThinkMind URL below might work better for item three (Tablet PCs…):

• http://www.thinkmind.org/index.php?view=article&articleid=achi_2012_2_20_20083

That’s the pointer the first author uses:

• http://www.ub.uio.no/english/about/people/ubodigit/andrega/ 
• See Publications: Gasparini, Andrea, & Culén, Alma (2012).

For item four (Typefaces for Dyslexia), I think OpenDyslexic meant _previously_ "at dyslexic.com/fonts.” The link seemed broken; so here’s a new one:

• http://www.iansyst.co.uk/articles/article/articles/2012/10/18/fonts-for-dyslexia

That article recommended ... a BDA Tech page (https://bdatech.org/what-technology/typefaces-for-dyslexia/), which indicated, “It is likely that line length, line spacing and font size are just as important" as fonts, and referred to Bigelow & Holmes 2014 post reviewing research:

• http://bigelowandholmes.typepad.com/bigelow-holmes/2014/11/typography-dyslexia.html

In 2014, on GitHub, Niclas Darville (ndarville) shared a link to a ready-made Google Scholar search:

• https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=dyslexia%20font

Two of the top three hits from that search today are behind paywalls.

French et al. (2013) may shed light on general benefits from alternative fonts. Rello and Baeze-Yates (2013) found, "Sans serif, monospaced and roman font styles significantly improved the reading performance over serif, proportional and italic fonts" (Abstract). 

A Master's thesis from University of Twente by Leeuw (2010) examined one font in particular, Dyslexie. Leeuw's thesis is accessible on Google Drive.

References

• French, M. M. J., Blood, A., Bright, N. D., Futak, D., Grohmann, M. J., Hasthorpe, A., … Tabor, J. (2013). Changing Fonts in Education: How the Benefits Vary with Ability and Dyslexia. The Journal of Educational Research, 106(4), 301–304. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220671.2012.736430

• Leeuw, R. de. (2010, December 21). Special font for dyslexia? Retrieved from http://essay.utwente.nl/60474/

• Rello, L., & Baeza-Yates, R. (2013). Good Fonts for Dyslexia. In Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (p. 14:1--14:8). New York, NY, USA: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2513383.2513447

Alternative webpage readability extensions for Google Chrome

Searching for a replacement for Clearly, which has disappeared from Chrome extensions, I found a pointer to the following GitHub page in a comment on an Apps User Group post: 

• Alternatives for the Clearly readability extension (Eric Curts, 2016.01.21).

• GitHub - ZachSaucier/Just-Read: A customizable read mode extension for Chrome

(Zach Saucier, 2016.10.28)

A few alternatives mentioned either in Curts' blog post and embedded YouTube video about alternatives (Control Alt Achieve, 2016.01.20), or in comments on it, included:

• BeeLine Reader (http://www.beelinereader.com/)
• Featured in Curts' blog post and YouTube video
• https://youtu.be/Q0sLceZAPDY (2016.01.20)
• 3.9 star rating by 150 (Chrome Web Store, 2017.09.06)
• Just Read: 
• Maintained (Unknown, 2016.10.27)
• Mercury Reader (https://mercury.postlight.com/reader/)
• 3.9 star rating by 1426  (Chrome Web Store, 2017.09.06)
• Readability:
• Obsolete (Michael, 2017.03.21)
• Reportedly replaced by Mercury Reader (Anonymous, 2017.05.21)
• The Readability site said, "[C]heck out Mercury Reader" (c. 2016).

At present, Easy Reader:

• 4.7 stars by 472 of 30,587 users (Chrome Web Store, 2017.09.06) 

seems to be right up there with Just Read:

• 4.7 stars by 376 of 72, 480 users (Chrome Web Store, 2017.09.06).

If you favor either Easy Reader or Just Read, please share your rationale(s) in comments on this post.

[205 words]

After Google Reader: Getting organized in Feedly

The transition into Feedly from Google Reader is seamless, and what you can do there is amazing! Once you have your feeds in Feedly, you can add them to new categories, and reorganize them into multiple categories.  All will backwash to Google Reader, till it goes belly up on the first of July:

We launched Google Reader in 2005 in an effort to make it easy for people to discover and keep tabs on their favorite websites. While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined. So, on July 1, 2013, we will retire Google Reader. (Official Blog, A second spring of cleaning, 2013.03.13)

For example, in the screenshot below, there is a Language . . . feed in a topic grouping (Languages and Learning), as well as in another source grouping (Facebook). Likewise, there are social groupings, such as KGUW_13-14, new mash-ups for an instructional cohort, and Learning with Computers, connections from a series of professional development workshops.

It is also possible to rename feeds in Feedly displays. For example, in the Wikispaces (source) category feed  listing above, all five current items look the same. The feed names need to be trimmed back to the essential wiki titles, for ease of reading at a glance in Feedly displays.

[212 words]

Another century post slips past

I figured it was time again for a human post when I noticed 300 for potpourri on the dashboard, and the month of February gone by without one. The 3ooth was an automated Diigo bookmarks compilation. Does extending the dashboard metaphor mean I was asleep at the wheel?

No, the three such automated posts last month represent about thirty Diigo bookmarks (February 2011). What with categories, highlights, notations, quotations, and tags as options, not to forget [group sharing,] Diigo-to-blog and -to-Delicious output options and other extensions, I'm beginning to think of Diigo as my micro-blogging engine of choice!

As the chart in the graphic and figures below indicate, total numbers of visitors and countries from which they hail continue on modest upward trends.

2010-10-15 79 2338

2010-11-00 n.d. n.d.

2010-12-15 80 2397

2011-01-00 n.d. n.d.

2011-02-15 81 2444

Sayonara, P2 - WinK Core

As noted on Sayonara, P2 - WinK Core, "a Vox Group acts largely independently of the individual blogs of the members of the Group" (2009.09.05, at 11:11). This bears out in endeavours to capture content from Vox prior to its imminent closure (2010.09.30). Although it has been possible to move posts from Vox directly to TypePad (How to move your Vox blog to TypePad, [n.d.]), and indirectly to a WordPress blog (see: Bloxi, in diagram below), such exports capture only posts by a single [blog's] author [or authors?]. Moreover, as almost all of ... [an individual group member's] WinK Core ... posts were private, they became drafts.

[Note: Various WordPress installations offer different options for direct imports (WordPress.com: Support: Tools: Import). If Vox isn't among your site's options, you'll have to improvise.]

Posts from pab's ning t'ing

Today's the last day I can say:

[I'm a member of pab's ning t'ing]

Free access to such Ning networking sites is phasing out as I type. As a matter of fact, I wonder how long the badge (gadget) that I've embedded above will last.

I've grabbed a couple of posts from My Blog on that site as keepsakes:

pab's ning t'ing

a microcosm in a nanosecond 

Tweaking RSS Feeds on Main Page

• Posted by pab on February 21, 2008 at 6:02pm

In order to show enough, but not too much, of the posts coming in through RSS feeds on the Main page, I have tweaked the settings on the various feeds:

1. Blogger blog feeds: Titles only - five per blog

The first couple of Blogger feeds, if not all of them, were coming through in full - with embedded videos and all the rest of the media dragging down page loading insufferably. So I trimmed them back to titles only. Then I increased the number of recent posts showing from three to five to show more a bit more content, and make it slightly easier to distinguish one blog feed from the next.

2. Edublogs and Vox blog feeds: Extended views - three per blog

Since RSS feeds from both of these types of blogs seem to limit themselves to several lines of text, I went ahead with the extended view option for all of them. However, I limited each feed display to the three most recent post, so as not to make it necessarily to scroll virtually endlessly to read down through the entire list of posts.

Arranging RSS Feeds on Main Page: Like Herding Cats?

• Posted by pab on February 21, 2008 at 5:00pm

Arranging RSS feeds in the Main page today has taken much more time here in Ning than it does on any page in Pageflakes. That is mainly because when you go to Manage - Features in Ning, you cannot see any content in the modular elements, or edit the titles on them to make them readily identifiable. Moreover, you cannot rearrange the elements directly in Ning page view like you can in Pageflakes.

The Main Page of pab's ning t'ing now contains nine RSS feeds, three from each of three educators in the Weblogging in Kumamoto (WinK) community. I've organized those nine feeds alphabetically: first by authors' family names (unlisted), then by blog titles. I reckon the list will stay in that order for a while, at least.

[retrieved 2010.08.20]

One of these mornings...

From a message on my Blended Learning and Instruction comment wall (BL&I), I learned that the iCal event I'd collected from BL&I over the weekend had failed to optimize itself into my local time zone (JST). Though the new event was visible in desktop views (Day/Week/Month) at 13:30 JST, 2009.03.28, hidden in the background was the event's actual UTC (GMT), and accurate JST calculations of starting and ending times. Need I add that I missed the event?

[caption id="attachment_44" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Event displayed at 13:30 JST, 2009.03.28"][/caption]

Since I recalled that WiZiQ featuring recordings, I re-drilled the BL&I website (Ning) from top to announcements, to events, to the one I'd missed, and looked for a link to or mention of a recording. Though there was nothing like that visible on-site, there was a WiZiQ sign-in box barely peeking around the edge of my browser window (Safari default size, about a hand-span in breadth).

So after dredging up a suitable mail address and password for the WiZiQ site, and logging in, I found just what I'd been looking for, a "View Recording" button in the center of the window!

The story continues from there, ...:

I tried to "View [the] Recording" (rectangular button below the Tags, Embed[ding] Code, and URL; above). However, the first four out of five times I tried, after successful sign in to WiziQ. I got messages displaying, "You are not authorized to view this recording." Much to my surprise, as I was returning to that recording page to collect evidence of what was going on, it finally loaded! I'm looking forward to watching the show now, and wondering whether anyone can explain the flukiness of access to the recording of it.

(comment yet to appear on WiZiQ,

Integrating Technology into the Classroom Using Moodle and Wikis)

... and resumes here, well, actually, resumed as a draft posted in Safari, and continues now in Firefox:

I started this post in Safari, and got as far as pasting in an overt URL and typing the page of the WiZiQ page (above). In Visual editing mode, twice I tried to insert the link, covered by the display text I'd selected. However, after the page background faded, the link dialog box never un-faded, , and all page controls below the bloxi URL became useless. The only option was to reload at the browser control level, hoping the auto-save had done its thing.

Fortunately it had, but paragraph divisions between default formatted passages (aligned left) above and below the block quotation and reference weren't appearing in the post display, not even in Firefox, until after I came back and hand-encoded them in HTML view. Whenever I get through a troublesome online session like that, I wonder whether ordinary learners or run-of-the-mill site visitors would ever go through all the bother, or ever come back again, much less tell you about it.