Skim-reading Strategies in Sighted and Visually-Impaired Individuals: A Comparative Study

As the amount of readily available reading material increases, the ability to read selectively, or to skim-read, is becoming an important skill. In this paper, we report a comparative study of existing skim-reading strategies in sighted and visually impaired individuals. Using a think-aloud approach, we identified key features of visual documents that allow sighted users to adopt a highly flexible and goal-oriented approach to skim-reading. These features are mostly lost when documents are accessed in auditory form, as is commonly the case for visually impaired individuals. As a result, this group has to fall back on either less efficient or cognitively more demanding exploration strategies. From our results, we propose a list of six design implications to guide the development of future technologies assisting non-visual skimming.

[1]  Charles F. Greenbacker.  Summarizing multimodal documents in popular media for people with visual impairments , 2012, ASAC.

[2]  Krzysztof Z. Gajos,et al.  Content-aware kinetic scrolling for supporting web page navigation , 2014, UIST.

[3]  Stéphane Ferrari,et al.  Tag Thunder: Towards Non-Visual Web Page Skimming , 2016, ASSETS.

[4]  Rebecca Treiman,et al.  So Much to Read, So Little Time , 2016, Psychological science in the public interest : a journal of the American Psychological Society.

[5]  I. V. Ramakrishnan,et al.  Accessible skimming: faster screen reading of web pages , 2012, ASSETS '12.

[6]  Thomas Ertl,et al.  A tactile web browser for the visually disabled , 2005, HYPERTEXT '05.

[7]  Vincent Hayward,et al.  Refreshable tactile graphics applied to schoolbook illustrations for students with visual impairment , 2008, Assets '08.

[8]  Stephen J. Payne,et al.  Skim reading by satisficing: evidence from eye tracking , 2011, CHI.

[9]  Geoffrey B. Duggan,et al.  Text skimming: the process and effectiveness of foraging through text under time pressure. , 2009, Journal of experimental psychology. Applied.

[10]  Tohru Ifukube,et al.  Auditory and tactile interfaces for representing the visual effects on the web , 2002, ASSETS.

[11]  Stephen J. Payne,et al.  Adaptive browsing: Sensitivity to time pressure and task difficulty , 2012, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[12]  J. Barlow.  The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains , 2010 .

[13]  Stanford E. Taylor.  Eye Movements in Reading: Facts and Fallacies , 1965 .

[14]  Johanna K. Kaakinen,et al.  Individual Differences in Reading to Summarize Expository Text: Evidence From Eye Fixation Patterns , 2002 .

[15]  Michael E. J. Masson,et al.  Cognitive Processes in Skimming Stories , 1982 .

[16]  Thomas Ertl,et al.  Tactile web browsing for blind people , 2007, Multimedia Tools and Applications.

[17]  I. V. Ramakrishnan,et al.  Non-visual skimming on touch-screen devices , 2013, IUI '13.

[18]  Carl Gutwin,et al.  Improving selection of off-screen targets with hopping , 2006, CHI.

[19]  Yili Liu,et al.  Introduction to Human Factors Engineering (2nd Edition) , 2003 .

[20]  José Antonio Gutiérrez de Mesa,et al.  Accesibilidad en Smartphones para el acceso a contenidos e-learning , 2012 .

[21]  Christopher D. Wickens,et al.  An introduction to human factors engineering , 1997 .

[22]  Christopher D. Wickens,et al.  Processing resources and attention , 2020 .

[23]  I. V. Ramakrishnan,et al.  Why read if you can skim: towards enabling faster screen reading , 2012, W4A.

[24]  K. A. Ericsson,et al.  Verbal reports as data. , 1980 .

[25]  Anatole Lécuyer,et al.  HOMERE: a multimodal system for visually impaired people to explore virtual environments , 2003, IEEE Virtual Reality, 2003. Proceedings..

[26]  Antti Oulasvirta,et al.  Spotlights: Attention-Optimized Highlights for Skim Reading , 2016, CHI.

[27]  Carl Gutwin,et al.  Revisiting read wear: analysis, design, and evaluation of a footprints scrollbar , 2009, CHI.

[28]  Ziming Liu,et al.  Reading behavior in the digital environment: Changes in reading behavior over the past ten years , 2005, J. Documentation.

[29]  Stephen A. Brewster,et al.  Clutching at straws: using tangible interaction to provide non-visual access to graphs , 2010, CHI.

[30]  Jodi Aronson.  A Pragmatic View of Thematic Analysis , 1995 .

[31]  H. Bastian.  Sensation and Perception.—I , 1869, Nature.

[32]  S. H. Srinivasan.  Speakr: auditory skimming and scrolling , 2006, MM '06.