How can we help people to enjoy church more. We do not provide answers for everyone. We are all different because that is how we were created. Our section ‘Hints and Tips’ does not guarantee to solve everone’s problems. But they have helped someone at some time. Even if they only help one or two it is worth it.
Meeting someone I knew who was now wearing rose tinted spectacles prompted the question ‘Why?’. I am dyslexic and the rose colour colour helps me, she said. Followed by meeting another dyslexic person who preferred violet. Eventualy I met another dyslexic person who preferred yellow. More importantly she emphasized that these colours did not relate to dyslexia as such but to an associated Visual Stress. Everyone is different and there are different ways to help with different problems.
Every Church is different; some project onto screens, others do not project at all. My church screen is the wall, others have screens that are black or white before projection. Our walls are cream but they are at the chancel end with a stained glass window in the middle of the wall. As the window faces into the eastern morning sun the screen areas appear to be dark to nearly black.
A lightly worded slide with a white background can appear as a white flash which is not good for a range of conditions, including epilepsy, and could trigger an episode. So we avoid white. We settled on yellow with a 70% transparency. That suits a lot of older people and visually impaired people. It also suits people with dementia and some dyslexic people with visual stress. You can change the transparency to suit local conditions. However it does not suit all visually impaired people; see Paragraph 1.1 on the attached RNIB colour/contrast information sheet: Colour/contrast-information
The same RNIB document gives a wealth of information on fonts colours and technical information valid for the printed word or screened.
Also have a look at the following PowerPoint using different background colours: PPTX colours
The first slide is yellow with 70% transparency, the second is purple with 90% transparency, the third is red with 90% transparency and the fourth is normal white. There is no right colour/font for all disaabilities. However there are some common similarities for some individuals.
I have been a volunteer with Vision PK (Perth and Kinross Society for the Blind) for about 15 years. They have given permission to copy their training handout. When I thought that I might like Black on violet background, I asked their advice because that could indicate dyslexia. They said it could rather be my advancing years. Their handout is again very good: VPK
Finally, there is a lot of information in an article by Action for Blind People. Again there ia a wealth of information here:
