The increase in remote work and e-learning sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic means more people are reading in digital formats, from eye-straining, small-text documents to PDFs that have embedded pictures and graphics. But thereβs a bigger problem β the technology doesnβt lend itself easily to help enhance reading speed or comprehension.
Other than being able to change font size and background lighting, digital readers are left with few options. Thatβs why the ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½ is partnering with global software company Adobe and others to improve the technology. This partnership is being highlighted today at the Adobe Max 2020 Creativity Conference thatβs being held online this year.
ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½ specifically is working with Adobe on a digital reading project that aims to reduce information overload. The project is part of Adobeβs continuing efforts toward creating products that empower people to change the world, such as its recent collaboration with a ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½-spin-off, the nonprofit Limbitless Solutions Inc.
The initiative includes a consortium of industry, nonprofit and university collaborators, including Readability Matters, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and the University of Arizona.
Using Adobeβs Liquid Mode technology, a reader can adjust text aspects β such as font size, style and character spacing β on PDFs that were previously set to a fixed text style and layout. ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½ researchers, meanwhile, are building tools to match readers to reading formats that enhance their speed and comprehension.
βIn early studies we have been able to accelerate some adultsβ reading by more than 25 percent,β says Ben Sawyer, an assistant professor in ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½βs Department of Industrial Engineering & Management Systems leading the research at ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½.
βIf your job requires you to read multiple hours a day, this is a huge potential workload reduction,β he says.
Reading is important for job success and civic engagement as poor reading skills are associated with unemployment, lower wages and voter apathy, according to studies from the National Center for Education Statistics.
With the advent of the pandemic, people are reading more electronic books, and remote learning has meant an increase in instruction and assignments through digital documents with fixed text.
But large screens, such as on personal computers, are not always readily available for people reading documents remotely, says Rick Treitman, entrepreneur in residence at Adobe, and Zoya Bylinskii, a research scientist at Adobe. Treitman and Bylinskii are facilitating the research.
Instead, people may have to use a tablet or smartphone if they donβt have their own computer or if they have to share a single computer with other family members.
βWe are seeing that a lot of remote learning is happening on phones because someone else in the household may be using the only computer,β Treitman says. βIt’s yet another device, and so if we can make the PDF experience on the phone better, then one student could do their reading on the phone, while another uses the laptop.β
Furthermore, when text is fixed into a certain style and layout in a document, it can cause problems as everyone sees text differently, so one text format doesnβt fit all, Treitman says.
For instance, one person may see normally spaced text as all scrunched together, thus hindering their reading. However, with digital text, this is a problem that can be easily addressed if readers can create their personal reading formats, as they can in Adobe Readerβs Liquid Mode.
For instance, even on older digital documents that may be already set in a small font size with tight spacing, a reader using the technology could adjust the text to suit their needs.
This takes control of the text display from the designer and gives it to the user, Treitman says.
βWe’re flipping the script,β he says. βAnd thatβs why weβve turned to ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½ and others to start this research. Text has always been designed by the author or by the publisher, and now we’re letting the reader design it. That’s a whole new paradigm.β
Sawyerβs team is currently collecting readability data from a large number of readers through the labβs research website, Readabilitylab.xyz.
Sawyer says they hope to soon bring some of their participants into the lab for electrophysiological monitoring to record the electrical activity of the brain while a person reads; track peopleβs eye movements as they read digital text; and measure peopleβs reading speed and comprehension of different passages of digital text.
βCOVID-19 is a challenge to in-person research, so we are testing 3D-printed eye-and-brain activity trackers and webcam reading tracking, all in an attempt to collect lab-quality data from people in their homes,β Sawyer says.
Current study participants are adult readers, but the researchers plan to expand their work to include younger and older readers, as well as non-English readers.
βOur initial research has told us that there’s not a one-size-fits-all solution,β he says. βLike a pair of prescription eyeglasses, we want to provide a reading experience personalized to an individual.β
Some of the labβs findings have already been incorporated into existing Adobe software.
Sawyerβs collaborators include Benjamin Wolfe, a postdoctoral researcher at MIT, and Jonathan Dobres, a consulting psychophysics scientist with a doctorate in cognitive sciences. Esat Boucaud and Sarah Minion, laboratory assistants in Sawyerβs Virtual Readability Lab, are also supporting the initiative. Boucaud is a sophomore majoring in computational physics, and Minion is a junior majoring in electrical engineering, both at ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½.
Sawyer says not only will the research efforts help workers and students read digital documents better, it will also help reduce information overload.
βNothing about the modern world is trending toward delivering us less information,β he says. βThese technologies can provide some relief from that and can give people help with reading.β
Sawyer received his doctorate in human factors psychology and masterβs in industrial engineering from ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½ and completed his postdoctoral studies at MIT. He joined ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½βs Department of Industrial Engineering & Management Systems, part of ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½βs College of Engineering and Computer Science, in 2018. He is also director of LabX, an applied neuroscience group addressing human performance, and a joint faculty member of ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½βs Institute for Simulation and Training, School of Modeling Simulation and Training.
