Paged Out #6 [pdf]

I really like this. Reminds me of ezines and webzines. However, I'm tempted to ask - how to comfortably read this on a computer if you don't have a reasonably good vision? Either you have to scroll up and down to follow the content, or you see whole page at once, but need to squint to read contents.

(PO! lead here) You are right, that's one of the unfortunate limitations of the format – having to constantly scroll the PDF. And this is on me, since ultimately I've made some decisions when establishing it which basically boxed us into this format.

I.e. thanks to using a PDF we can give authors full flexibility on how to lay out their article, which allows folks to be really really creative (as you can see in this issue). The obvious problem with that (apart from countless hours foxtrot_charlie - our DTP/PDF programmer - has to spent on fighting with PDF weirdness) is that reading an A4 PDF isn't great for phones, computers screens, or tables. It's even worse if you're using a screen reader, since getting PDFs in the way we get them and making them screen reader compatible is... complicated, to say the least (that's why it's not yet there). On the flip side, everyone has a PDF reader nowadays, articles look everywhere the same (this wouldn't be true for other formats), and it's also printable almost out of the box.

So, pros and cons. At the end of the day I don't think there's an easy out for us without breaking any of the things which make Paged Out! what folks like about it. The things I want to improve is getting printed versions more accessible, and some day finally getting solid screen reader support. But other than that I do believe the scrolling problem with remain with the zine.

ETA: Actually I also want "readings" of articles to become a thing. From the get go we put the in the author's license (note: not all articles use it, but most do) the ability for folks to agree to have their articles be recorded in an audio form. I think that would be cool for folks who like consuming things like audiobooks or podcasts. And it would save us from scrolling (for the cost of having illustrations described instead of seeing them).

Setting some gentle publication conventions could help a lot with this. For example, requiring two-column or three-column format greatly improves article readability on mobile.