Reading Needs Its Next Gutenberg Press
The Next Wave in Reading Technology for Education, Employee Productivity and Beyond
Marjorie Jordan and Kathy Crowley
March 23, 2021
Summary
It is widely accepted that reading is one of the most efficient ways to acquire information; better readers are more confident and have more educational, career, and life opportunities. Many people in the United States can read, yet, the US Department of Education finds that most are not proficient. There are countless individuals not fully participating in the knowledge economy. It is not just basic literacy that is important; proficient reading has a broad-reaching societal impact.
Reading material delivered in a one-format-fits-all model has been the norm for centuries on paper and for decades electronically. Yet, research demonstrates strong readers and struggling readers, adults and children, all have the potential to experience improved reading outcomes using a technology-enabled model of reading with personalized text formats. We posit that technology affordances create new opportunities; rather than optimize for the population, we can optimize reading formats for the individual. We recognize Adobe’s innovative work to enable readers to reflow and reformat PDFs to support improved reading outcomes.
We use Clayton Christensen’s frameworks to describe how the approaching wave of reading technology will address customer’s next-generation performance needs, therefore expanding the written material market to currently underserved and unserved customers. The convergence of increasingly ubiquitous technology, digital content, and reading applications make it possible to imagine a world of personalized reading formats, significantly improving reading proficiency and comprehension, making each reader the best reader they can be.
Introduction
Generally, people in the United States can read. But individual differences in reading proficiency are so significant that the US Department of Education finds that only 13% of adults[i] and 34–37% of children[ii] are proficient readers. These statistics indicate a much bigger issue; educational systems typically do not qualify most of these non-proficient readers for specialized assistance. There are countless underserved and unserved individuals not fully participating in the knowledge economy. Adults and children alike create strategies to avoid reading, make mistakes at school and at work, and miss important information. It is not just basic literacy that is important; proficient reading has a broad-reaching societal impact.
The sharp rise in technology distribution and adoption in 2020 for both students and knowledge workers creates an opportunity to improve reading experiences. The expansion of technology usage has produced ever-increasing demands for literacy. To participate in their games and social structures, children must read at an early age. Literacy experts Vaca et al. note, “Adolescents entering the adult world in the 21st century are expected to read and write more than at any other time in human history. They will need advanced levels of literacy to perform their jobs, run their households, act as citizens, and conduct their personal lives.”[iii] When we invest in raising individual reading performance, everyone benefits.
Reading material delivered in a one-format-fits-all model has been the norm for centuries on paper and for decades electronically, creating this milieu of non-proficient reading. We posit that technology affordances create new opportunities; rather than optimize for the population, we can optimize reading formats for the individual.
Since early in the 20th century, researchers have documented that individuals respond differently to text format.[iv] [v] [vi] More recent research has shown that small changes to text format can improve individual reading outcomes. Adults can improve their reading speed by as much as ten pages per hour by changing the font alone.[vii] For children, Readability Matters has seen an instantaneous change to reading fluency, the speed of accurate reading, of up to 50% or more. (Advancing the Reading Ecosystem[viii]) Personalized reading formats are not just a solution for struggling readers. While a small number of readers did not benefit from a change to the alternative formats offered, both of these studies demonstrate results for individuals of all reading ability levels. In a proof of concept conducted with Adobe, improvements occurred for students reading at the 23rd and 99th percentile of their peers.[ix] [x] Strong readers and struggling readers, adults and children, all have the potential to experience improved reading outcomes using a technology-enabled model of reading with personalized text formats.
Many different audio signals can be adjusted for a better sound experience. In the same way, visual components of text format can be adjusted to create a better reading experience. Text format adjustments include size, shape (base font, character width, and weight), and spacing (inter-character and line spacing). Technology offers new opportunities for you to Tune Your Text[xi], improving readability and your reading performance.
An initial set of Readability Features are available on a number of platforms today. (See Readability Hacks: What Can I Do Today? [xii]) While these offerings are insufficient to deliver the improved reading outcomes that research demonstrates are possible, tech and publishing companies have begun the work to provide better individual reading experiences.
Given historical publishing file formats, this work is challenging. In order to allow a reader to personalize a text format, the reader must have access to text (not a picture of text as many electronic textbook publishers provide), and the text must be reflowable (it cannot have a character return at the end of every line). Content creators today, in anticipation of electronic distribution on multiple platforms (as with publishing for Amazon), create reflowable text for eBooks. Older content and content for complicated layouts used in technical publications and textbooks are generally not produced as reflowable text.
Further, to the extent that a reader desires Readability Features that exist in one reading app, they are likely to run into conversion and/or digital rights management issues in trying to use content from another providers’ platform.
While the technical challenges are significant, we posit that there is a path to improved reading proficiency through a personalized reading approach.
Christensen’s Disruptive Innovation
In the early 1990s, Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen coined the term “disruptive innovation.” The disruptive innovations “often appear modest at their outset but over time have the potential to transform an industry.”[xiii] According to the Christensen Institute, “Disruptive Innovations are not breakthrough technologies that make good products better; rather they are innovations that make products and services more accessible and affordable, thereby making them available to a larger population.”[xiv] (emphasis added)
Christensen’s work on innovation and competitive response is widely considered and applied by technology companies. We believe these models can inform the work required for the next wave of reading technology. Personalized reading formats will expand the electronic reading market to include individuals who have chosen not to (or could not) read with the suboptimal text formats offered today.
With the benefit of 30 years of learnings about disruptive innovation, we are hopeful that tech and publishing companies will join in developing the market-creating performance improvements and resulting social good (in the form of improved literacy) that a move to personalized reading formats promises. Better readers are more confident and have more educational, career, and life opportunities.
The question remains, will the reading application incumbents incorporate the sustaining innovations necessary, or will they leave room for a Christensen-style disruption in content delivery? Who will provide the content delivery platform that best meets the needs of customers working to acquire information? Who will capture the market of new readers? Will new players emerge to offer better reading experiences and win the customers?
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Read the full paper at:
https://readabilitymatters.org/reading-needs-its-next-gutenberg-press
[i] National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL). (n.d.). National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved January 20, 2021, from https://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp#3
[ii] National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Report Cards. (2019). https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/
[iii] Vaca, R. T., Vaca, J. A. L., & Mraz, M. (2013). Content Area Reading: Literacy and Learning Across the Curriculum (11th Edition). Pearson.
[iv] Tinker, M. A., & Paterson, D. G. (1928). Influence of type form on speed of reading. Journal of Applied Psychology, 12(4), 359–368. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0073699
[v] Erdmann, R. L., & Neal, A. S. (1968). Word legibility as a function of letter legibility, with word size, word familiarity, and resolution as parameters. Journal of Applied Psychology, 52(5), 403–409. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0026189.
[vi] Sandra Wright Sutherland (1989) The Forgotten Research of Miles Albert Tinker, Journal of Visual Literacy, 9:1, 10–25, DOI: 10.1080/23796529.1989.11674437
[vii] Wallace, S., Treitman, R., Huang, J., Sawyer, B. D., & Bylinskii, Z. (2020). Accelerating Adult Readers with Typeface: A Study of Individual Preferences and Effectiveness. Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1145/3334480.3382985
[viii] Crowley, K., & Jordan, M. (2019). Advancing the Reading Ecosystem Toward a Future of Personalized Reading: Human Factors Research + IT Systems Promise Value for Education, Business and Individuals. https://readabilitymatters.org/advancing-reading
[ix] Crowley, K., & Jordan, M. (2019). Tech Proof of Concept Results Summary. https://readabilitymatters.org/results-summary
[x] Crowley, K., & Jordan, M. (2020, October 22). The Adobe Tech Proof of Concept, Part II. Readability Matters. https://readabilitymatters.org/articles/the-tech-proof-of-concept-part-ii
[xi] Tune Your Text. (2020, June 26). Readability Matters. https://readabilitymatters.org/articles/tune-your-text
[xii] Readability Hacks to Improve Readability for All. (n.d.). Readability Matters. Retrieved December 01, 2020, from https://readabilitymatters.org/readability-hacks
[xiii] Dillon, K. (2020, February 4). Disruption 2020: An Interview With Clayton M. Christensen. MIT Sloan Management Review. https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/an-interview-with-clayton-m-christensen/
[xiv] Disruptive Innovations. (n.d.). Christensen Institute. Retrieved January 17, 2021, from https://www.christenseninstitute.org/disruptive-innovations/
