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8 Colour Coding Systems

The document discusses Edith Fitzgerald's 1929 book which introduced a method for teaching language to deaf people using symbols to represent parts of speech, but did not specify a color coding system. Over time, a color coding system became attributed to her involving colors like blue for adjectives and yellow for pronouns. While variations exist, color coding systems aim to classify and distinguish parts of speech visually. The document also describes methods for implementing color coding in communication boards, including background fills, border colors, and title bars, and notes Voice Symbol currently only supports background fills. It discusses considerations for scanning systems and outlines Voice Symbol's automatic color encoding feature.

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Maia Ilham
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160 views4 pages

8 Colour Coding Systems

The document discusses Edith Fitzgerald's 1929 book which introduced a method for teaching language to deaf people using symbols to represent parts of speech, but did not specify a color coding system. Over time, a color coding system became attributed to her involving colors like blue for adjectives and yellow for pronouns. While variations exist, color coding systems aim to classify and distinguish parts of speech visually. The document also describes methods for implementing color coding in communication boards, including background fills, border colors, and title bars, and notes Voice Symbol currently only supports background fills. It discusses considerations for scanning systems and outlines Voice Symbol's automatic color encoding feature.

Uploaded by

Maia Ilham
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Sure Start Sheets 8

Voice Symbol I

Colour Coding Systems


Back in 1929, Edith Fitzgerald wrote a book entitled 'Straight Language For Deaf' which, as its name implies, is a manual on a method for teaching language and grammar to those people who have little or no hearing. Although Edith divides sentences up into parts of speech, and has a key system for doing this, at no point in the book does she talk about a colour encoding system (Fitzgerald's original key was based on a set of six symbols with each standing for a particular part of speech). However, such a colour encoding system has been attributed to her and it has become known as the Fitzgerald Color (colour) coding system. It is a means to classify different parts of speech and to make them easily distinguishable from one another. Though there appears to be no one set colour standard for every part of speech in the system, some colours are consistently used: adjectives pronouns nouns verbs blue yellow orange green

beyond that there appears to be a variety of colours used in what generally is referred to as a 'modified Fitzgerald key': adverbials conjunctions determiners expletives interrogatives negations prepositions brown white grey red purple red pink

It should be stressed that you will find all manner of variations on the 'Fitzgerald key' in use although it is recommended that you consistently maintain at least one 'standard'. Of course, there may be classes within classes: for example, there are modal and auxiliary verbs as well as lexical verbs. All will be colour coded green but a variation in the tone of green used can be made to great effect. Also where nouns are grouped according to categories, each category could have an alternating shade of orange such that neighbouring categories are distinguishable.

1 Colour Coding Systems

Sure Start Sheets 8 Ways of Colour Coding cells There are at least three ways of colour coding cells:

Voice Symbol I

1. Background fill A background fill is the most obvious of the colour encoding methodologies completely flood filling the background to cell behind the symbol. However, this method uses a lot of printer ink and, therefore, is the most expensive. Furthermore, if you find that when you print you are getting an error message relating to the lack of available memory, switching to one of the other colour coding methodologies may resolve the problem. Some images used for AAC systems (especially those imported from the web) do not have a transparent background and when placed on top of a coloured cell fill show the symbol background over the cell colour. This tends to obscure the cell colour and does not look visually pleasing, especially if some symbols have the white border and some symbols do not. Furthermore, such imported images will partially obscure any fill scan used, if such an access method is employed. Imported images should be selected therefore that have transparent backgrounds: .jpg will always have the white surround, while many gif files will not. Better still are vector graphics (.wmf) which do not have backgrounds and will not pixellate if a re-size is required. 2. Border colour Border colour encoding utilises either the actual frame of the cell or places an additional colour border inside the frame. The width of the boarder can be set by within the software by the board designer such that it can be at a size that can be easily seen by the Learner when s/he is using the board. As only the border is coloured, less printer ink is used reduces printing costs. 3. Title Bar Title Bar Colour Encoding places a strip of colour at the top of the cell in a Monopoly property card like arrangement. As the border colour methodology, this process uses a fraction of the colour than a full background fill and therefore also reduces printing costs. All the illustrations for this section use the Fitzgerald Key colour orange to represent a noun for the symbol for banana. As long as the 2 Colour Coding Systems

Sure Start Sheets 8

Voice Symbol I

use remains consistent through a board set, any shade or tone of orange could be used as long as it distinguishable from other colours on the board. NOTE: For scanning systems Users, the scan type must be set to the opposite of the colour encoding system used. For example: if a border colour encoding system is used, the scan type must be a fill scan. If the background fill colour encoding system is used, the scan type must be an outline scan. This is to reduce the possible visual conflict between border colour encodings and border colour scans, as well as between background colour encodings and background colour scans! The scan position must be clear to the Learner and this is best achieved by adopting a type of scan that does not conflict the colour encoding system used. Presently, Voice Symbol only provides the background fill colour encoding methodology. The other encodings are planned but not yet complete. When they have been introduced, the designer will be able to choose any method and then easily colour-encode cells. Automatic Colour Encoding Voice symbol includes an automated system for colour encoding cells to save the designer both time and effort when building boards and ensuring consistency across boards and systems. The A.C.E. (Automatic Colour Encoding) system is switched off by default and has to be switched on manually from the GM pane. Once turned on, as symbols are stamped into cells so a background colour is automatically applied. The default colours follow the Fitzgerald key, however, any colour can easily be set from within the system. A problem occurs were a word can act as more than one part of speech: as a high percentage of words in English behave this way, it is a bit of a headache! Consider the word go. If you were asked what part of speech it was, you would probably say a verb. However, if you have a go at something; go here is acting as a noun! Therefore, how can the software know what colour to add to a background: green for a verb or orange for a noun? The answer is, it doesnt. It has be taught both! It will first stamp one colour (green) and then, if thats not how you intending using the symbol, it will change it to another (orange) if you select F4 from your keyboard. F4 acts to cycle through the available colours for any vocabulary unit. Some words have been assigned up to six colours because the word can act as six different parts of speech! Not only can you change the colour assigned to a part of speech, you can rearrange the order in which the colours are stamped. As such, the system is totally customisable. It is not the function of this Sure Start Sheet to describe how to adjust the settings for the A.C.E. scheme, this is covered in the user manual.

3 Colour Coding Systems

Sure Start Sheets 8

Voice Symbol I

Colours can also be adjusted manually, if you are designing a cell that is an exception to the rule and, so, all eventualities are covered.

4 Colour Coding Systems

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