Mårten Cederman and Anton Warnhag
The work presented in this report represents an attempt at creating an alternative reading method for dyslexics based on RSVP (Rapid Serial Visual Presentation). An introduction to chosen parts of previous research on dyslexia and reading is given to bridge into what we’ve chosen to call SSR - Self-paced, Serial Reading. Broadly speaking, SSR represents the features we think are important in a version of RSVP intended for dyslexics. The features are based on the fact that RSVP limits the amount of text shown at any given time. We believe this could help with certain underlying parts dyslexics suffer from.
We present the development of a prototype app as a possible interpretation of SSR. To evaluate the prototype, five dyslexics participated in a prepared test as well as a subsequent interview. The main purpose was to test if the method worked at all, including why or why not, and what the testers thought.
The results indicate that a version of RSVP that limits the shown text to a single word makes it somewhat easier for dyslexics to focus on decoding the word, but that it becomes harder for them to place the word in the right context. They also illustrate the difficulty in deciding for how long different parts of the text should be shown. Finally we suggest possible subjects that could be analyzed in the future in order to decide if this reading method fails on our implementation, or possibly, if it actually isn’t an good way to read for dyslexics.