Legally Blind User...

[Allen Horn]

Dear Serif Developers, 

My name is Allen Horn and I am visually impaired. I know what you're probably thinking... What? Yeah well I am legally blind, however, I only have about 40% vision in one eye, and colored blind as well. I absolutely had to tell those at Serif, what an amazing job creating this program! In all transparency, I have absolutely no design background of any kind. 

I am graduating on May 14th 2019 and I have to give this company credit for saving my ass! I am graduating as a cyber security IT analyst. Part of my last semester was to create a "PlayBook" (manual) for the IT department for Louisville Metro Government. 

Since I had no previous experience in publishing... I began to scour the web/youtube to find software and tutorials to guide me through the process. It was then I stumbled upon a YouTube creator name Elaine Giles. Ms. Giles gave an OUTSTANDING tutorial and was able to walk me through step by step on how to create the document. It ended up being 67 pages long, and the formatting was pretty amazing in my opinion. Well at least for someone who doesn't know what "amazing" looks like  This is all of the good stuff! 

Now for the not so good... Because of my visual impairments, I spent most of my time trying to find the appropriate options to choose. If I could perhaps make a suggestion for all of the Serif products, is to make at least some effort to accommodate those who are visually impaired. I currently own both iPad and Desktop versions of Affinity Photo, Designer, and now the beta of Publisher. None of which work with my screen reading technology. This is "very unfortunate" as this would save an incredible amount of time if there were an option to turn on where it will call out the toolbar options aloud. 

Also I searched and searched for an E-Book version of the "workbook" for "Designer, Photo and Publisher", in hopes I could navigate, and consume the information in a more contextual and relevant way. Unfortunately all I found were "hard cover" books that really don't do me much good. I typically need like 7-12X zoom, and its extremely hard to do that from a book that is typically in 12pt font and below. Also, it seems that perhaps embedded videos and such would be extremely helpful as well. I don't mind paying for a product that will help me, and I realize creating a Learning Management System (LMS) of sorts would be quite costly, but I would buy it! I have tried to change the resolution of my screen to increase the size of the toolbar... but it doesn't do much good either. In fact some of the toolbar elements disappear. Mind you... I use a 65" 4K television as my monitor. 

I understand the concern that Serif has of people sharing information the book was in an E-Book format. However, until things change, there's not much you can do about it. Unless you want to exclude the 3% of the population like myself.

Now for some more good... Attached below you will find the book that I am currently working on. I still have an issue getting the TOC to work. Perhaps I am misunderstanding what the TOC can do. I was under the impression that the TOC would allow the end user the ability to click that "subject", and it take them to that section of the book. Ugg... I still can't get it to work, perhaps someone could take a look at what I have thus far and offer some suggestions. 

Best regards, 

Allen Horn

FTK_Project.afpub

Edited April 28, 2019 by Allen Horn

[Patrick Connor]

@Allen Horn

Thanks for your input and Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums

i hope you don't mind me moving this to the feedback forums. If you don't mind can you please make a new thread about the TOC problem in the Publisher bugs forum for the QA team to address.