Comparing semiliterate and illiterate users' ability to transition from audio+text to text-only interaction

Authors:
Leah Findlater;Ravin Balakrishnan;Kentaro Toyama
Affiliations:
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada;University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada;Microsoft Research India, Bangalore, India
Venue:
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Year:
2009

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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 should thus be treated differently from illiterate users in interface design.