לֹא־תְקַלֵּל  חֵרֵשׁ  וְלִפְנֵי  עִוֵּר  לֹא  תִתֵּן  מִכְשֹׁל  וְיָרֵאתָ  מֵּאֱלֹהֶיךָ  אֲנִי  יְהוָֹה:

"You shall not insult the deaf or place a stumbling block before the blind. But fear your God: I am the LORD." (JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh, 1999).

This leaves no doubt that those in the community who are less fortunate must not be further disadvantaged. Rav-Hazzan Dr. Scott M. Sokol, a neuropsychologist and cantor and rabbi, commented on this verse in his keynote address at the first GISHA Conference (Good Ideas Supporting Hebrew Access) in 2009, where he was presented to the community as the Korman Family Professor of Jewish Education at Hebrew College, Newton Centre, Massachusetts:

These crimes take particular advantage of a person's disability and so they are both cowardly acts, as well as cruel. The deaf person can't hear the insult, and therefore, can't defend her/himself. The blind is injured both physically and psychologically through lowered self-esteem. The Torah is teaching us to be compassionate with the disabled in every modality in which we may encounter them and to be proactive in our defense of adjustment for their disability. Speaking out against discrimination and by removing impediments to their participation in our greater society, we elevate them and ourselves, so that we can all benefit for the greater good.

As a response to this mandate, this author believes that resources intended for working with novice Hebrew readers need to be as visually helpful as possible. It is the goal of this paper to present a way of formatting Hebrew texts used for prayer and study that helps to reduce and ease the time to fluency for a novice Hebrew reader.