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Comment by olodus | Hacker News Reader

Since they mention education but only seem to have mostly bad things to say about audiobooks in that context (unless I missed something, I skimmed that part) I would like to add how this has changed dyslexics relationship with education and with books in general. My brother is dyslexic and before I think he never read a book ever. This year he got a audio book he wanted as a Christmas gift and he was super happy. That the library of Audio books is expanding is a great thing. I do however agree with the article that the prevelent use of closed formats could be very bad in the long run though. I do think audible is a good deal but I don't like that they use closed formats. There are however still libraries and the increase in audio books can luckily be seen in their available stock as well.

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What surprises me with respect to dyslexia is how poor accessibility options are in modern operating systems.

If I understood the research correctly, dyslexia researchers get material improvements in reading speed when they increase the amount of space between words and lines. The gist of the explanation given was that dyslexics basically struggle to separate out the word they're trying to focus on from the surrounding wall of text.

Put another way, while this is fine for normal readers:

    quick brown fox jumps
    over the lazy dog

Changing it to this makes it easier to read by dyslexic readers:

    quick  brown   fox   jumps
    
    over   the   lazy   dog

Perhaps OS designers aren't unaware of it (hint hint if you work on an OS); or perhaps the research isn't as conclusive as I recollect. If the former, it seems like a no brainer to throw in an accessibility option to enable this OS-wide.

I use the build in speech synthesizer on my mac to listen to most long form articles even shorter texts like hn comments. There are the options to configure a keyboard shortcut to read the highlighted text and increase the reading speed. I've also installed a program to switch languages from the command line.

There is https://www.beelinereader.com/ (unaffiliated, but am a a fan).

Has there been any research/discussion about how this would work for non-dyslexics (I know it would be an option, so not an issue; I'm just curious)? I find myself wanting to go from "quick brown" to "lazy dog" in the second one, even reading it slowly, and I'm not really sure why.

Insofar as I can recollect, sort of, at least if you infer what happens when the space between words or lines is too large. The gist of the issue for a dyslexic reader, as I understood it anyway, is a focus problem.

Picture an ellipse of sorts over the word you're trying to focus on as you read. A dyslexic person will struggle to get the ellipse on that word, and instead gobbles up part or all of the text around it (parts of the words before and after, and parts of the words above and below) - or not enough of it? - leading to fatigue and slow read speed.

If memory serves me well:

- By increasing the space enough, you make it simpler for a dyslexic reader to focus on each word, improving reading speed. (Anecdotally I find web typography more readable with slightly increased line height and word spacing, so methinks it's not just dyslexic readers who benefit.)

- By increasing the space too much, however, you make it harder for readers (dyslexic or not) to follow the flow of text (words become disconnected, if you will, as you've experienced in the second example), and that ends up degrading the reading speed.

- Every reader (dyslexic or not) has an optimal spacial arrangement.

You can kind of see the effect in action by increasing the line height, kerning, and word spacing in an html document. Increase either of those three too much and the text gets harder to read. Increase one or more of them slightly above the default values and the text will be more comfortable to read.

<<- I do think audible is a good deal but I don't like that they use closed formats. ->>

On the other hand, it's much easier to rip an Audio book, than remove DRM from an ebook.

It's there any service left not covered by some Calibre plugin? I thought they have everything.

If your brother is a student I highly recommend https://learningally.org/link

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