Difficulty Reading
Since elementary school, I have struggled with reading long passages.
Whenever I read a large amount of text, I would quickly become tired, skip lines, or sometimes even have difficulty recalling kanji characters.
When I was in elementary school, I used a ruler to help prevent myself from skipping lines while reading.
Even then, I often had to focus so much on simply following the text with my eyes that I could not fully understand what I was reading.
However, using a ruler also had several limitations:
-
I could not always carry one with me.
-
The document had to be flat enough for the ruler to slide smoothly.
-
I could not change the appearance or style of the text itself.
My parents suggested that I receive more formal support.
However, at the time, I was afraid that it would draw attention from my classmates, so I could not bring myself to accept it.
The Idea for the App
When I was in middle school, my parents told me more about the difficulties I had experienced in elementary school.
That became one of the reasons I wanted to create an app in high school that could support people who experience similar difficulties with reading.
At first, I considered building a dedicated assistive device. However, I decided to make it an app instead so that support could be more easily accessible to anyone.
The main goals were:
-
To make support available simply by installing the app.
-
To avoid requiring any external assistive equipment.
-
To allow the display to be customized in detail for each individual user.
Balancing Simplicity and Speed
Since elementary school, I have often found it difficult to focus on text when there are illustrations or other visually distracting elements nearby.
Because of this, it was important for the app's interface to remain as simple as possible.
On the reading screen, I designed the interface so that no unnecessary elements appear around the text. This includes controls such as section navigation buttons and the button used to open the camera.
However, because the app is intended for everyday reading, it also needed an input method that was both fast and difficult to use incorrectly.
For this reason, most interactions in the app are based on gestures.
App Details
The app allows users to open the camera and scan text they want to read.
It extracts the text, divides it into sections based on specified punctuation marks, and highlights the text one section at a time.
While developing the app, I introduced the following features.
Text-to-Speech
This feature reads the text aloud while highlighting the section that is currently being spoken.
Blink Detection
Blink detection was designed as a way to move the highlighted section easily without using your hands.
Originally, users had to tap the screen every time they finished reading a section, so I wanted to create a more convenient alternative.
At first, I experimented with changing the highlighted section based on the user's gaze. However, the accuracy was not reliable enough, and it also required users to constantly be aware of where they were looking.
Because of this, I changed the interaction method to detecting blinks instead.
With gaze-based control, users also needed to move their eyes in a more deliberate way, which could sometimes stand out in public spaces.
Blinking, on the other hand, is a natural action that can easily be used in public without worrying about attracting attention.
Settings
The settings allow users to customize not only the font and line-breaking behavior, but also details such as the highlighting style, background color, and line spacing.
These options are designed to help each person create a reading environment that works best for them.
My next goal is to continue improving the app so that it becomes easier to use not only for myself, but for many more people.