Virtuosity - An obituary

Alright, I admit it. I watch popular TV.

All I can say in my defence is that my wife forces me.

That said, I do derive a modicum of voyeuristic, academic interest in the anthropological perverseness of it all. I'm not surprised at who wins and loses on X Factor or Strictly Come Dancing. But, I do lament the fact that the first casuality of popularity is virtuosity.

I also confess to enjoying watching the Strictly' professional dancers. Because they really can dance. Christina and Ola are my favourites. Then again, I could watch them direct traffic.

So when the judges have given their opinions and scores it's over to the Great British public to put it all back into perspective and all the talent in the world won't save you from show business oblivion. Because the public don't care if you can't sing, dance or entertain, as long as you represent a popular 'cause'. In John & Edwards' case, the fact that they're Irish has earned them huge nationalistic support. That also happens if the contestant happens to be Welsh or Scots. They get carried further towards the final on a tide of jingo-votes.

That doesn't happen on Strictly'. Here we have a battle of the soaps Vs sport. Sure, the person who wins is normally deserving of being declared the winner. But, along the way, people who can dance just as well (if not better) fall fowl of the TV public's viewing and sporting preferences.

Virtuosity is ignored; of no real importance in a spectacle of blind favouritism.

It's sad.

I feel for the professional dancers who courageously struggle to make a pair of glossy pumps out of two left flip-flops. In a week that has headlines declaring 'Jordan makes TV history' by appearing twice on I'm a Celebrity.., I also despair for the future of television.

And, I mourn the tragic passing of virtuosity. On telly, at least. But, what do I know?

Carbon Footprint hypocrisy

I recently attended the funeral of a proud man who loved his country and rugby. Among his dying wishes he asked to be cremated along with his national flag and his favourite rugby team shirt. However, there are apparently 'carbon neutral guidelines' which prevent such wishes being fulfilled. So, his wish was not met. Does this happen all over the UK?

Are crematoriums checking clothing labels before giving them the nod? If so, is it ok to shuffle off this mortal coil in smoke as long as it's in a 100% wool Hugo Boss and not a polyester blend from Asda? What if you can't afford 100% wool whistles? What if it's a deceased child's favourite teddy bear that doesn't comply with eco guidelines?

Whilst I don't wish any ill upon X-Factor's twerpish twins John & Edward, but, what if they got killed in a crush of screaming fans and they wanted to be voted into the great final-in-the-sky wearing their trademark red vinyl threads? Not to mention the industrial quantities of hair gel they use? Is that an eco no-no too?

It strikes me that, if this is becoming an industry standard for cremation, surely those who dictate the guidelines are conveniently ignoring the emissions belched out by the never-ending cavalcades of stretch-limos that chauffeur mourners to and from the fiery farewell at 10 miles an hour and 6 miles to the gallon?

Perhaps they will cotton-on to this and offer a trade off to the departed who left 'on-board baggage' requests - you be can be torched along with anything you like as long as everyone else turning up takes the bus.

Now government Tsars are prescribing environmental departure wear for the dead, I suppose graveyards will need to be managed more like council landfill sites - i.e. anything that can be recycled must be recycled, not interred.

But what do I know?

Are you Reading Me?

Something needs sussing, soon. Help me.

I recently had the privilege of working with an organisation which assists people of varying disability. In preparing my recommendations, I researched best-practices for online ‘accessibility’.

I discovered that a unique font has been created by Fontsmith specifically for the visually impaired and people with other reading disabilities (primarily dyslexia etc.).

It is called FS Me. Visit www.fontsmith.com

This is how they describe the font on their website:

FS Me is designed to aid legibility for those with learning disability. FS Me was researched and developed in conjunction with - and endorsed by - Mencap, the UK’s leading charity and voice for those with learning disability. Mencap receive a donation for each font licence purchased.

That’s a great initiative. However, currently the font is only usable in print and can only be used online as an image-based element. In other words, it can’t be used as online text.

Isn’t that a great shame? So I am wondering this:

Is the font FS Me that much more helpful to those who need it most? If so, should the digital communications industry be lobbying to have it encrypted/encoded for internet text use?

I would love to know what has been done (if anything) and what can be done to make it happen.

It doesn’t make sense that the many government and charity based websites that need to be most accessible can’t use the text that is reputed to be the most legible.

Maybe it has already been debated and a conclusion arrived at. If that’s the case, my friends in the disabled access community are not aware of it.

I know that as long ago as 2003, Wired ran a story (http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2003/10/60834) about a Dutch designer, Natascha Frensch who was close to releasing a similar font, called Regular Reader.

This is an extract from the article:

Without these enhancements, the traditional fonts used on the Web and in newspapers, books and magazines can contribute to letter-reversal errors and other problems commonly associated with visual dyslexia.

According to the U.K.-based Dyslexia Research Trust, as many as 10 percent of English readers have some form of dyslexia, a learning disorder thought to be caused by a combination of genetic, immune and nutritional factors.

Although most children have trouble with letter reversal when first learning to read, dyslexics often continue to have problems as they grow older.

"All beginning readers make letter reversals," primarily before age 6, said John Stein, founder of the Dyslexia Research Trust. "However, 50 percent of child dyslexics at age 8 complain of visual problems including letter reversals."

Stein believes specialized typefaces can help combat the symptoms of dyslexia, especially if the fonts are used in large print and do not have serifs, the tiny lines that project from the bodies of letters in many common type styles.

Currently, many dyslexia-friendly websites use the sans-serif Arial typeface. But like other potentially problematic typefaces, Arial uses similar forms for the letters b and d, p and q, and u and n.

Some organizations, like the University of Edinburgh Disability Office, have tried using the Comic Sans typeface instead. But the thick and asymmetrical characters that make up Comic Sans often are considered to be too whimsical for professional use.

However, if you go to Natascha Frensch’s own website for the font, she uses Microsofts Verdana, because her ‘more legible’ font can only be used as a visual element. http://www.readregular.com/english/intro.html

There’s a lot of activity going on but no satisfactory results. dyslexic.com reports on efforts by Microsoft which fall short of best practice in terms of editable text online. Read more about it from this link.

http://www.dyslexic.com/articlecontent.asp?CAT=Dyslexia%20Information&slug=67&title=Typefaces%20for%20Dyslexia

They say:

Britain has two million severely dyslexic individuals, including 
some 375,000 schoolchildren. 10% of people using ‘Romance’ 
languages are coping with a reading difficulty. 
Dyslexia is a combination of abilities and difficulties that affect 
the learning process, displaying a wide range of difficulties. 
Dyslexia can occur despite normal intellectual ability and teaching, 
and it is independent of socio-economic or language background.
The British Dyslexia Association

There has been growing innovation to combat dyslexia, especially 
for children, in the form of computer software. However, relatively
little design research has been done in the area of typography 
and type design that might support dyslexics. Read Regular is 
a typeface designed specifically to help people with dyslexia read 
and write more effectively.

Read Regular aims at preventing a neglect of dyslexia, creating 
a more confident feeling regarding the problems that occur 
with dyslexia.

As I see it, the big online issue is as follows: most public sector and charity websites have a requirement for self content management. The WAI ratings are self-assessed as long as you follow the guideline. So achieving best practices is not only a variable, it falls short of the opportunity, given that there are fonts available that are more user-friendly than those available to the communications industry. I feel sure that it wouldn’t cost Microsoft that much to make one of these font available.

All you agency colleagues out there in WPP-land, have a word with your global client.

Everyone else, put the word out. Let’s make it easier for all to read what’s written online.