Easy on the Eyes: The Benefits of E-Readers for Students with Dyslexia Tvissha Goel As tablets continue to shrink in size and increase in user-friendliness, e-readers in particular seem to be growing in popularity and prevalence among college students. Not only are they now more convenient than ever and nearly weightless, but they also offer a potential benefit to those with dyslexia. In a recent study, Matthew Schneps, Director of the Laboratory for Visual Learning, and his colleagues at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics conducted an experiment involving 103 high school students with dyslexia and no history of any other neurological disorders.1 Text was given to the students in both print and digital forms while the students’ reading speeds were measured with stopwatches. The electronic versions were presented on iPods and had a 42pt font with only three or four words per line. Multiple choice questions were then administered to the students to assess their comprehension.4 Most students performed better on the assessments after using the iPod rather than print form. E-readers may lessen the effort needed by dyslexic students to read texts, because of the larger font and fewer words per line made possible by these e-readers. This is a key advantage for students with this disorder since dyslexia has been associated with oculomotor—i.e., eye movement—deficits and a lack of visual attention. This was attributed to a low VA span score, or the inability of a reader to keep his or her attention on the reading content.4 At Rutgers in the 2010-2011 academic year, 122 students identified as dyslexic, compared with 78 in the previous year. One of the resources that the university provides for such students is Kurzweil 3000, an assistive software that presents text and reads the documents aloud for students.3 THE EXAMINER
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Among other features designed to enhance learning, writing capabilities are also provided with this software, allowing the reader to add notes. However, studies have shown that assistive technologies have limits when it comes to math and science subjects. As researcher Klaus Miesenberger writes, “Mathematical and scientific formulas are not of a one-dimension nature like text. In addition, the spatial nature of formulas makes comprehension of their meaning from hearing them alone extremely difficult. … People read them in quite a different way than the way they read novels.”2 Considering this perspective, there is still work to be done in the domain of learning technology for scientific and technical content. While the research does not specifically compare the advantages of e-readers with those of assistive technologies such as Kurzweil 3000, tablets and iPods may serve as an alternative or an addition to the current technologies used by students with dyslexia at Rutgers. Such texts that provide larger font may be a feasible option to help aid in reading comprehension.