[nabs-l] Techniques for Creating a Poster for Research Conference?

Mon May 11 18:39:14 UTC 2015

Hi,

In my experience, I have gotten a reader or collaborator on the
project to actually make and print the poster.

In my experience, people use a PowerPoint slide and put text boxes and
graphics all around the slide. If you have access to a researcher or
friend who has made a poster, it might be beneficial for you to look
at their poster. Ask them to trace your hand around the poster so you
can learn how many sections they have and just how large they are.

If your poster is based off of a paper that you have written, I
recommend including the title, authors, maybe a sentence or
visualization about the research problem or question, a few sentences
about methods, and key results bulleted if they can't be rendered in a
visualization or to help visitors to your poster understand your
visualizations. If you include any graphs depicting your results in
the paper, they will definitely be top priority to include on your
poster.

If you don't have graphs, and if you do have quantitative results,
you'll want to convert them to graphs. Make sure all visualizations
have very clear keys.

It is also common for posters to have colored borders or fillings
between the various boxes of text or graphics. Often, my colleagues
and I make the border of our posters purple as it is a University of
Washington color, and you may include your university, department, and
lab logos. This sounds tedious and extra, but if there is a chance
that anyone in your lab will be asked to present the work again, it
will be great to have a nicer-looking poster ready.

So, I recommend making the contents of the poster and then asking
someone who has experience (they are quite tedious to make), assist
you in putting the content together and printing.

You can probably make graphs in Excel and just ask a reader to enhance
the graphs by perhaps putting markers on key points on the graph that
you want to draw the visitor's eye to. Or, you could just enter the
data into Excel and let the reader handle graphics as well.

You can easily write text content. Small blocks of text, in other
words, a few sentences or less and bulleted lists are the best. Keep
in mind high contrast if you choose to use colored backgrounds.

Regarding printing, if you do not have an office on campus that does
it for you and instead will be using a poster printer yourself, I
highly recommend sighted assistance. First to proof your design; they
can zoom in and out with the PowerPoint slide and learn whether the
overall design is proportional. Printing posters is expensive, and you
don't want to do it twice if you don't have to. Next, the printer
sometimes gets off centered, so you'll want someone to verify that
your poster printed straight. Finally, there may be white space on the
poster paper depending on the size it prints in comparison to your
designated size. There should be a giant paper cutter in the poster
printer room, and sighted assistance will be really helpful in cutting
the white space off.

You should learn whether the poster presentation venue will provide
you with pins and cardboard or foam board for you to mount your
poster, and an easel to mount it on. If not, you can find some used
cardboard or foam board and glue or pin your poster on. If you think
you may use the poster in the future, pin rather than glue your poster
to any backing so you can roll it up for easy carrying from place to
place. It is typical for venues to have easels available but not
always typical for venues to have a backing to pin your poster to.

I hope this helps. I'm sorry there aren't more promising independent
ways to do this. I have just found that since posters are in the
public eye and so large, getting sighted assistance is really helpful
for me to present my work professionally and to circumvent parts of
the process that are still inaccessible.

Good luck and congratulations for being chosen to present a poster!

Cindy

On 5/9/15, justin williams via nabs-l <nabs-l at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> I'm mostly a jaws user, but I can tag team them.  That is incredible.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nabs-l [mailto:nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Bridget Walker
> via nabs-l
> Sent: Sunday, May 10, 2015 1:17 AM
> To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
> Cc: Bridget Walker
> Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Techniques for Creating a Poster for Research
> Conference?
>
> Hi Justin,
> I never tried using a braille display with Microsoft publisher until a few
> miners ago. It was actually pretty accessible.
> I'm imagining you would want to have someone check your formatting but, at
> least you could do it yourself.
> I hope this helps.
> Bridget
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
>> On May 9, 27 Heisei, at 7:23 PM, justin williams via nabs-l
> <nabs-l at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>>
>> Is microsoft publisher accessible for an individual who uses jaws and
>> braille?
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: nabs-l [mailto:nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Bridget
>> Walker via nabs-l
>> Sent: Saturday, May 09, 2015 4:37 PM
>> To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
>> Cc: Bridget Walker
>> Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Techniques for Creating a Poster for Research
>> Conference?
>>
>> Hi Miso,
>> I make posters all of the time.
>> You have two options I can think of. The first is Glogster. Glogster
>> is a free online poster maker. From my experience it has not been
>> accessible with any screen readers. I highly recommend having sighted
> assistance.
>> The second option is Microsoft publisher. It's nice you can I put
>> everything in yourself. Honestly at the end of the day you will
>> probably want someone to look it over.
>> I hope this helps.
>> Bridget
>> Sent from my iPad
>>
>>>> On May 9, 27 Heisei, at 3:40 PM, Miso Kwak via nabs-l
>>>> <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello students,
>>> I have a possible opportunity to participate in a research conference
>>> at
>> the end of the quarter. The format of presentation is 36x48 inches
>> poster.
>>> If anyone has some tips and advice on how to create and manage
>>> poster, so
>> that I can submit my poster electronically, please help me out.
>>> Technology is not my strong suit but I am willing to learn. Also, if
>> sighted assistance is the most efficient way to go, please give me
>> some tips on that as well.
>>> Thank you in advance.
>>>
>>> Miso Kwak
>>>
>>>
>>>
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-- 
Cindy Bennett
1st Year Ph.D. Student, University of Washington
Human Centered Design and Engineering

Treasurer of the National Federation of the Blind of Washington
an Affiliate of the National Federation of the Blind

clb5590 at gmail.com