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EBooks and the Disabled

The Electronic Book 2000 Conference included the break-out session "E-Books:  Tools For Bridging the Digital Divide," which focused primarily on new technologies to help the disabled.   One product introduced was Live Ink Text Engineering from Walker Reading Technologies, Inc.  Created by brothers Randall and Stan Walker, the idea behind Live Ink is that reading comprehension can be improved if the text is reformatted from straight-line sentences into syntaxtically parsed phrases.  Here are the opening sentences of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles reformatted with Live Ink:

     On an evening  
                         in the latter part  
                                                of May a middle-aged man  
                            was walking homeward  
                         from Shaston  
                                                  to the village of Marlott,  
                             in the adjoining Vale  
                                                 of Blakemore or Blackmoor.      The pair of legs  
                                      that carried him were rickety,  
                             and there was a bias  
                    in his gait  
                               which inclined him  
                                        somewhat to the left  
                                           of a straight line.  

The sheer number of pages needed to create an entire book in this layout makes it cost prohibitive.  However, in the digital world of ebooks, there is no paper to waste, so the text can be laid out in whatever format best suits the reader.  The Walker brothers claim that the Live Ink format makes reading easier on the eyes and the brain by providing visual and spatial cues to indicate sentence meaning. 

A recent, independent study of Live Ink Text Engineering found:

    • an immediate and statistically significant increase in reading comphresension in college-level readers with Live Ink format compared to conventional text (average increase 40%) and comprehension tripled in the lowest fourth of readers and doubled in the second lowest fourth
    • a 75% reduction in the frequency of reported eyestrain
    • a preference for Live Ink format stated by 60% of readers after only one hour of use
Further studies are currently underway.  Presently, there are three CD-Roms available for purchase (with a money-back guarantee) with collections of texts in Live Ink format:  Classics for the Young at Heart; College Classics and King James Bible.  The Live Ink Books, which must be read on a PC computer with Windows 95, 98 or NT, have adjustable fonts (up to 40 point) and a variety of background and text colors.  Walker Reading Technologies, Inc. hopes to soon be able to sell the Live Ink rendering software so that individuals can reformat digital texts of their own choosing.  Moreover, the Walker brothers anticipate that Live Ink formatting will someday be a feature on all ebook devices that can be turned on and off.

For more information about Live Ink Text Engineering, see the Walker Reading Technologies, Inc. homepage at http://www.liveink.com/ .
 

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