Typography to bring auditory cues to readers that cannot hear to improve their comprehension.

Abstract

Reading is a complex activity that relies on several cognitive and linguistic processes. The key role that phonology seems to play in the process of reading has been widely investigated and many scholars have raised the question about the impact that the lack of auditory cues creates in readers with hearing issues. A vast amount of literature shows that non-hearing readers usually struggle with developing reading skills, which affect to their linguistic development and verbal learning and subsequently, hampers their integration in social and professional environments. Previous research on this matter has tended to focus on linguistic solutions, by simplifying lexical content and reducing the amount of text. In the case of reading material to support audio-visual content, such as the case of subtitles, a visual approach has also been adopted on top: establishing a set of guidelines for the number of words per line and second as well as suggesting the use of a specific font style, font size and color of the font. However, these guidelines are usually established by experts with no relation to the field of typography and visual communication, creating typo-graphic solutions of questionable efficiency. Communication in times of Covid-19 has become more challenging than ever before for people with hearing issues, since the omnipresence of an opaque facemask has forced them to rely on reading material, sometimes exclusively. At READSEARCH, we believe that better solutions for written communications can be found from a typographic perspective. Specifically, in this case of study we show how a typographic interpretation of speech features may bring auditory cues to non-hearing adult readers when being used in subtitles. This study shows an improvement in the reading performance of non-hearing adult readers in terms of reading comprehension.