Optimal audio-visual representations for illiterate users of computers

Abstract

We present research leading toward an understanding of the optimal audio-visual representation for illustrating concepts for illiterate and semi-literate users of computers. In our user study, which to our knowledge is the first of its kind, we presented to 200 illiterate subjects each of 13 different health symptoms in one representation randomly selected among the following ten: text, static drawings, staticphotographs, hand-drawn animations, and video, each with and without voice annotation. The goal was to see how comprehensible these representation types were for an illiterate audience. We used a methodology for generating each of the representations tested in a way that fairly stacks one representational type against the others.