Learning how to write research papers and essays can be overwhelming for students with low vision or print disabilities that impact access to standard print. While teacher and peer feedback is a great way to improve writing skills and writing research papers in general, accessing feedback can be challenging if it is not in a format that students can access. As part of my Writing Success series, here are tips for making proofreading feedback and writing feedback accessible for low vision and other print disabilities.
When I was in elementary school, my teacher noticed that I was struggling with revising my writing based on their feedback, and that I wouldn’t notice where they would underline words to capitalize or fix punctuation. Since they provided all of their feedback in red pen, I found it difficult to figure out what changes I needed to make, as I could see the red ink on the paper but not what had been written with it. To remedy this, my teacher began color-coding feedback, where they would use a blue pen to mark letters to capitalize, red to mark punctuation errors, green for words to add and pink for words to remove. This really helped as I could look at a color and immediately know what type of error was made and where I would need to make revisions.
In college, one of my professors would grade typed assignments by hand, circling blocks of text and writing out feedback in pen. I noticed that I had trouble figuring out which lines had been circled and couldn’t read their handwriting at all, so I asked if they could use colored highlighters in lieu of pen to indicate areas where I needed to make corrections instead of circling them. This worked a lot better, and one of my professors in grad school has also incorporated this strategy without me asking.
Reading handwritten comments or feedback on a page can be difficult or impossible for visually impaired students, especially if they use a screen reader or text-to-speech. Instead of making inline notes where feedback is inserted into the document, it is much more helpful to use the Insert Comment tool in Microsoft Word or Google Docs to write out feedback, which can then be enlarged with text scaling, magnification, or read out loud with a screen reader. While I can still access comments on the desktop applications, I really like reading comments on the iPad apps for Word and Docs, as I find it easier to read comments in large print on those devices.
Insert Comment functionality is also available in other Microsoft Office and Google Workspace applications, such as Excel/Sheets and PowerPoint/Slides.
Another option for providing feedback is to suggest changes to text in Microsoft Word or Google Docs, which can include adding, deleting, or replacing content within the original document. In order to do this, the user providing feedback will need to have editing access so they can add their changes.
For students who have trouble reading text in a sidebar, one of my professors would number lines or sections where they wanted to add feedback, and then attach a separate document with their proposed changes or feedback. For example, if my professor highlighted a section and marked it with the number 1, I would open the separate document that has a copy of what I wrote, followed by their feedback. Another option was to hyperlink the number 1 within the document and “jump” to another section where I could access the proofreading feedback, along with an additional hyperlink to “return” to the previous section. This strategy works well when paired with color-coded highlighting for feedback too.
Another strategy that has worked well for providing proofreading feedback is meeting either face-to-face or virtually with another person and going over different areas that need to be revised or making edits together in real time. The document can be displayed on a video call with screensharing or multiple parties can open a document and collaborate simultaneously, talking through their feedback in real time. If synchronous collaboration is not an option, one of my professors would film a video or screen recording of them talking through feedback and highlighting changes to make in a document, attaching a highlighted or commented version of the document that I could edit digitally.
By Veronica Lewis/Veronica With Four Eyes, www.veroniiiica.com
Updated December 2024; original post published May 2022.
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