Alternate Format Production

What is Alternate Format?

The term “alternate format” or “alt format” refers to accessible versions of educational materials designed for students with print-based disabilities who access information by touch (braille and tactile graphics), hearing (screen-readable text), and sight (large print).

Stanford houses a world-class Alternate Format Production team who are available to remediate materials for undergraduate and graduate level courses - including STEM, foreign languages, and music - into the specific formats students need.

Types of Alternate Formats

Braille and Tactile Graphics

Braille is a language system consisting of raised dots that is read by touch using fingers, and can be either embossed (printed with physically raised dots) onto paper or displayed on a portable electronic braille device. Tactile graphics are images such as pictures, maps, graphs, and diagrams that similarly convey meaning by touch using raised lines and patterned surfaces embossed onto paper or displayed on a portable electronic device.

Our in-house braille specialists are certified in a wide variety of braille types, including literary, Nemeth math, music, and braille formatting. While industry standards for braille transcription services typically require several weeks to multiple months, our highly skilled and nimble team can work with you to deliver braille and tactile graphics to students within 4-5 business days, or 5-7 business days for exams.

Screen-Readable Text

Screen readers are software programs that enable users to read and navigate computer screens by converting text to speech and adding keyboard commands so users can operate their computer without using a mouse or looking at the screen.

Our team will start by assessing your materials for screen reader compatibility. Documents that have been designed with accessibility best practices are often compatible with screen readers as-is and will not require remediation. 

When remediation is needed, materials are converted into specially formatted Word documents or static HTML files depending on the document content and student’s access needs. For example, math content must be displayed in HTML using LaTeX and MathJax to be screen-readable.

Large Print

Large print refers to documents formatted in a font size much larger than standard 12pt font and may be printed on paper or delivered electronically for students to read on a computer screen.

Depending on the student’s need, large print production can be as simple as changing your document’s font size to 18pt font. For documents that require more complex remediation, such as textbooks or documents containing images and tables, our team will remediate files into a suitable large print format.

Our Workflow

Alternate format materials are produced in-house by:

1. Using optical character recognition software to extract text from your original files, including converting math content into LaTeX.
2. Adding accessibility structure and formatting including headings, page numbers, lists, tables, footnotes, etc.
3. Writing image descriptions and alt text, or incorporating descriptions and alt text provided by the teaching team. Designing tactile graphics as needed.
4. Converting files to final formats such as braille, DOCX, or HTML.
5. Thoroughly proofreading and checking for quality assurance, editing text and math content for accuracy.
6. Embossing braille and tactile graphics on one of our in-house high-speed braille embossers.
7. Binding printed/embossed documents for student in-person pick-up or distributing files to students electronically.