Comparing Semiliterate and Illiterate Users' Ability to Transition from Audio+Text to Text-Only Interaction
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Comparing Semiliterate and Illiterate Users’ Ability to Transition from Audio+Text to Text-Only Interaction Leah Findlater 1, Ravin Balakrishnan 2, Kentaro Toyama 3 1Department of Computer Science 2Department of Computer Science 3Microsoft Research India University of British Columbia University of Toronto Bangalore, India Vancouver, Canada Toronto, Canada [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT Multimodal interfaces with little or no text have been shown to be useful for users with low literacy. However, this research has not differentiated between the needs of the fully illiterate and semiliterate – those who have basic literacy but cannot read and write fluently. Text offers a fast and unambiguous mode of interaction for literate users and the exposure to text may allow for incidental improvement of reading skills. We conducted two studies that explore how semiliterate users with very little education might benefit from a combination of text and audio as compared to illiterate and literate users. Results show that semiliterate users reduced their use of audio support even during the first hour of use and over several hours this reduction was accompanied by a gain in visual word recognition; illiterate users showed no similar improvement. Semiliterate users Figure 1. Setting for Study 1, showing the translator observing should thus be treated differently from illiterate users in the participant. interface design. 26]. Previous research, however, has largely not Author Keywords distinguished between illiterate individuals and the vast ICT4D, literacy, semiliteracy, development, accessibility, number of semiliterate individuals, those who have some inclusive design familiarity with letters and words but may in fact have ACM Classification Keywords difficulty reading even a simple text passage; by one H.5.2 [User Interfaces]: Evaluation/methodology, estimate, 75-80% of the literate population in India may be interaction styles. only semiliterate [14]. As an illustrative context, Medhi et al.’s [16] text-free employment search engine matches INTRODUCTION domestic labourers with jobs in Bangalore, India. The An estimated 785 million adults around the world are search engine has been shown to be useful for low literacy illiterate [7]. More than one third of this population lives in users in general, but the target population has from 0 to 6 India, where the literacy rate is 65% according to the 2001 years of education, encompassing a range of literacy skills. Indian census [6]. As access to online information and software tools is increasingly required for individuals to Grouping together all low literacy users runs the risk of fully participate in society, we need to consider how these overlooking potential benefits of text for semiliterate systems might better support different levels of literacy. individuals in terms of both performance with the interface and broader impact on reading skill acquisition. Everyday Interfaces with minimal or no text that instead utilize one or exposure to text provides important incidental learning more of graphical, audio and numerical components (to opportunities [13], which are important for reading skill leverage numeracy skills) have been shown to be useful for reinforcement and the maintenance of rudimentary skills. users with low levels of literacy [1, 3, 10, 15, 16, 20, 23, 25, This is the theory behind including same language subtitles in local-language television programs, a technique which Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for has been shown to improve script decoding in Gujarat, personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copi es India [14]. From an interaction perspective, text offers a bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or fast and precise mode of communication. Augmenting a republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific text-based interface with another modality such as audio or permission and/or a fee. images could provide non-textual support for low literacy CHI 2009 , April 4–9, 2009, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Copyright 2009 ACM 978-1-60558-246-7/09/04...$5.00. users when needed but could ease semiliterate users into interacting more with the text as they gain experience. Although some studies have shown that text-free interfaces employment search [16], financial management [20], are preferred by low literacy users in comparison to fully agriculture [22], video email [23], an electronic bulletin text-based interfaces [16], there is some indication, albeit in board [24], web page creation [10], and healthcare [12, 25]. a study with just one user, that text can help a person with These prototypes have been evaluated to varying degrees; low literacy to disambiguate images over just a few we discuss the more generalizable findings. sessions with the interface [3]. As well, users with strong Medhi et al. [16] compared text-free interface designs for literacy skills are more likely to prefer an interface with at an employment search application and a map application to least some text over none [24]. However, there have been corresponding text-based versions. An evaluation with low no formal evaluations to isolate the preference and literacy users (0 to 6 years of education) showed that the performance differences of fully illiterate users from text-free versions were preferred and increased task semiliterate users. It is unclear whether previous findings accuracy. In contrast to our study, their text-based interface on minimal or no text interfaces apply directly to was purely textual and was not augmented with audio. semiliterate users, or whether semiliterate users, even with More recently, in a study comparing participants’ very little education, can benefit from text in the interface. understanding of health information represented as text, To address this question, we conducted two controlled drawings, photographs, videos or animation, all with and experiments using an experimental interface and search task without audio, the conditions with audio resulted in higher provided in Kannada, the predominant language in the state understanding and task accuracy than conditions without of Karnataka, India. In the first study, 12 semiliterate audio [15]. Some participants also reported the text participants (Figure 1) showed performance improvements condition to be confusing. While this highlights the that were coupled with reduced use of audio support. The importance of audio for low literacy users, the authors second study measured longer-term learning with the acknowledge that some of the accuracy benefit may have interface and changes in visual word recognition, and been due to participants mimicking the audio rather than compared the performance and preferences of 12 understanding the material. participants with different levels of literacy (illiterate, In the design of a financial management system for rural semiliterate, and literate in other languages). All user micro-credit groups in India, Parikh et al. [20] conducted groups improved their task performance, while both the iterative design sessions with 32 women. The final design semiliterate participants and those literate in other included numbers to leverage numeracy skills, icons, audio, languages reduced their reliance on audio support and and text in the local language. Audio augmentation was significantly improved their ability to recognize written found to be useful for disambiguating items. Although the words over the course of the study. impact of different levels of literacy was not the focus of The primary contribution of this paper is empirical evidence their research, the findings provide preliminary support for to show that, in contrast to the needs of fully illiterate users, our work: most participants were able to use the final a text-based user interface augmented with audio can be design, except for those with the lowest levels of literacy. beneficial for semiliterate users. For these users, an Parikh et al. [21] have also confirmed the importance of improvement in performance on a simple search task was audio in the context of a cell phone application for coupled with an improvement in visual word recognition, capturing paper-based information. Rural literate users who even though this improvement was incidental to the main tested a text-only version of the interface after using it with task goal; this benefit was also seen with users literate in both audio and text preferred the version with audio. languages other than the target language. From a designer’s Finally, Shakeel and Best [24] designed a community point of view, these findings suggest that illiterate and bulletin board catering to a range of literacy levels by semiliterate audiences may need to be considered as very combining audio, images and text. An evaluation compared different user populations. The addition of audio the preferences of low literacy users to users who had annotations to an existing text-based interface can passed a basic literacy test. Only 2 out of 5 of the low significantly support semiliterate users and should be easier literacy users wanted at least some text, in comparison to all than creating a new, text-free one. 5 of the users with stronger literacy skills. The evaluation BACKGROUND was not designed to measure performance or to assess We summarize related work on interface design