Matthew, 25:40 (DysBible format)
Come and discover DysBible
DysLibrary™'s first project on Kickstarter
That's why I'm on Kickstarter today
Because I understood that the only way to get the project off the ground
is to steer the entire process, founding my own publishing house,
starting by republishing the most important classical texts,
at least the copyright-free ones, with my patent-pending method,
to allow dyslexics access to literary classics, as a first step.
For me, however, opening a publishing house means abandoning
any other project to dedicate myself 100% to this:
that's the reason why I have set a very high bar for my supporters and backers;
if I don't reach the goal, it will mean that there is still something to fix;
at that point me too I will feel comfortable postponing the start-up,
and the rest of the project, carrying on my job, what I've been doing for my entire life until I retire, or I reach the financial stability that will allow me to dedicate myself to DysLibrary™.
The DysLibrary™ revolution:
from patients to clients.
Nobody nowadays would ask lactose-intolerant people to go and look around to seek alternatives to milk
and make their own lactose-free milk or cheese at home.
Nobody nowadays would ask celiac people to buy their special flours and prepare their own gluten-free bread at home.
However, nowadays, it seems normal to us to ask dyslexics to buy our books and, at their homes, on their computers,
have them forced to adapt our tools in the best way possible, to finally manage to read and access culture in a bit easier way.
Lactose intolerance, celiac disease, and dyslexia have a lot in common:
None of these are diseases:
they are simply different ways in which the human body has organized some of its functions.
From "I have (am) a problem"
to "We, like you, have specific needs, and fulfilling them
is convenient for all of us"
A lifetime in marketing, sales, and alongside dyslexics has convinced me that the biggest (involuntary) mistake that has been made so far
in the fight against dyslexic discrimination,
has been focusing only on managing the dyslexia of individuals,
trying to help them "eating our bread and drinking our milk".
The DysLibrary™ project aims to undermine the order of things,
in the mind of people, first, by getting dyslexics out
from neuroscience institutes and psycho-pedagogy sessions
(which remain precious tools, that help them and will always help them, like for celiac and intolerant).
The final objective is to bring them into the bookstores and the shops,
to peacefully experience their diversity simply as customers of a specific, enormous, market niche, finding all the "dyslexia-friendly" culture on the shelves, together with soy milk and gluten-free products.
The Patent
Invention having the title:
"Method for standardizing
the layout of texts
for dyslexics",
ABSTRACT
Method for standardizing the layout and formatting of books and graphic texts in paper, digital, electronic or any other format, through the definition of the criteria for the use of dimensions, colors and shapes of the page and the font used, as well as the text arrangement and layout rules, to be used in the publishing world to offer an economically sustainable solution at an industrial level for the publication of texts immediately usable by dyslexic people, which do not have to be subsequently reworked through individual compensatory tools and which allows expanding the commercial distribution of these texts with the presence of the product on the mass market, encouraging dyslexics' approach to reading and their access to culture.
DysLibrary™, DysBible
and the empty space
Years of experience have convinced me
that dyslexics need empty space above all,
a lot of empty space;
Unfortunately, in the world of writing and editing,
empty space on pages has always been experienced
like food waste in restaurants,
and this is still the attitude of the publishers I contacted,
even if today the advent of electronic files
allows us to overcome this limit,
without having “collateral damage” and feeling guilty.
Let's compare
On the right, the first page of a traditional Bible:
Times New Roman, size 12, justified, two columns, etc...
Traditional A4 sheet format contains
789 words and 4,053 characters.
On the left, the first page of the DysLibrary Bible, DysBible:
Open Dyslexic, size 18, left aligned, in one column,
no bright colors, newline at every punctuation, etc...
This A4 sheet contains 53 words and 150 characters.
For fitting the same number of words (789),
DysBible utilizes 12 pages instead of one.
Anyway, the ODT/DOCX file of DysBible Genesis
weighs less than 200 KB.
Any problem in fitting into your netbook?
Q: The very problem of dyslexics
is it reading texts or browsing pages?
DysLibrary™:
a "no frills" project.
For a dyslexic, reading has always been the worst torture.
But, like for all human beings, knowing what's "in there" and having access to culture like everyone else is a normal desire.
For this reason, DysLibrary™ plan is to publish quickly
as many copyright-free classic texts as possible.
To see them published as a "new edition" it is often necessary to insert some variations and some notes, but the aim is to quickly hit the shelves;
The introductory notes inserted at the beginning of the DysLibrary™ volumes will never be scientific insights or innovative dogmas of the analysis of those texts, but only invitations to reading.
Simple and clear introductions are probably the best help for a first approach to that book; if a dyslexic person has never had access to a text, it is unlikely that he needs its most up-to-date analysis and exegesis.
No one claims to have academic skills in almost any field, which I certainly do not have.
If those who have the rights to some modern texts contact me to reformat those books with the DysLibrary™ method, I'm open to any collaboration.
Why PDF "only"?
The world of publishing and text visualization is not yet ready for the DysLibrary™ revolution.
Very few Apps have "Opendyslexic" fonts embedded,
while the other fonts dedicated to dyslexics have copyright rights that create problems in their adoption as a standard solution.
So, every time you open a DysLibrary™ file with any App or if you open it in an "Office" suite without having Opendyslexic installed among the fonts, you will see default settings appear, and all the work of DysLibrary™ will be deleted.
To date, no e-reader reads correctly an e-pub created with the DysLibrary™ format.
The two alternatives available today are PDF files or pasting images of the same pages onto other formats, to prevent the current program from rearranging the file automatically.
If anyone has suggestions for getting around this obstacle,
I'll be happy to analyze and adopt them.
Over the next two years, everyone who backed me on Kickstarter will receive a copy of the new format, if a better solution than PDF is found.
