Development and Evaluation of a New HTML Browser Method of Presenting Reading Material for Students with Low Vision

Abstract

Students with low vision or partial sight have a variety of vision needs and their needs are very different from student to student. Provision of suitable reading materials is still a difficult task. What we describe here is a novel method combining web-related technology and recent advancement in vision science. With reading tests by the MNREAD-J reading chart, we obtained parameters defining each student’s vision needs. A newly developed software package called the HTML viewer generated a CSS layout data for each student according to the parameters. With this individually adjusted CSS, any web browser displays HTML documents in appropriate way for each student. Textbooks were prepared in HTML format and used with the HTML viewer. Evaluation in real classroom setting showed students were able to use this new method of reading efficiently without a prior knowledge of PC operation.