Abstract:
Dyslexia is defined as a neurological reading disability characterized by difficulties with word recognition, poor decoding abilities and poor spellings. Dyslexia is a learning disability which initially shows itself by difficulty in learning to read, and latter by erratic spellings and by lack of facility in manipulating written as opposed to spoken words. As side effect this impedes, the growth of vocabulary and background knowledge. Since a great amount of information is presented as text, this condition makes it more difficult for children with dyslexia to use well standard information systems. The purpose of this research is therefore to adopt a pragmatic approach to design and develop an application as a reading aid for the dyslexics. The aim was to focus on the specific usability needs of the dyslexic readers, and built an application catering their reading difficulties and hence improving their learning abilities.
The proposed approach offers young dyslexic users a range of appropriate visual settings to enhance their visual processing. The application is built keeping in mind the learning scope of dyslexic readers by implementing the machine learning algorithm. The task of Readers Learning Algorithm (RLA) is to ensure that each and every element including the 26 alphabets and 10 numerals is learnt by the dyslexic child. In addition, the valuable design principles and associated textual attributes under the umbrella of usability requirements are being defined, analyzed and implemented.
The evaluation was made by means of User Acceptance Testing, where the potential users (Dyslexic students of IDEAS institute, under the age group of 5-8) were taught by the help of developed application by their respective instructors. The evaluation analysis was made based on the results gathered by means of questionnaire conducted. Most of the interface requirements in terms of design principles and textual parameters have been implemented successfully. The Readers Learning Algorithm (RLA) was devised to increase the learning scope of the children, and the results gathered have just supported the solution identified.
