UDL-Con International 2024
One Font Doesn’t Fit All:
Text Personalization Significantly Impacts Comprehension
July 30, 2024
UDL-Con International 2024 was a gathering of education, government, tech, and edTech professionals, each working to improve educational outcomes for all learners. Attendees represented 14 countries and 43 US states. Among the presentations was the better readability-focused talk, “One Font Doesn’t Fit All: Text Personalization Significantly Impacts Comprehension.” Readability Matters’ Co-Founder Kathy Crowley, Dr. Shannon Sheppard, University of Washington, and Dr. Susanne Nobles, ReadWorks joined forces to review the advancements in research and development work to bring personalized reading formats to students everywhere. (The importance of supporting opportunities to customize the display of information is now included in the CAST UDL Guidelines 3.0.)
Kathy set the stage, demonstrating a wide range of text format changes that can be used to improve text readability for individuals. She described early research demonstrating that small changes to text format could be used to make meaningful changes in reading speed and accuracy for individuals. Her highlights included a 2015 study with an average fluency gain of 28% and a 2018 proof of concept study with a new prototype version of Adobe Reader.
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Conference Goals
- Consider the crosswalks of UDL and other promising educational frameworks
- Challenge assumptions about teaching, instruction, and learning
This session was designed for participants to:
- experience the impact of changes to typography
- understand the current research on the impact of text format on reading comprehension
- learn how to incorporate this newly expanded UDL guideline into their instruction to support both access and agency for their students
The Ultimate Goal of Reading is Comprehension
Previous studies have demonstrated that a change in text format can improve a reader’s reading speed and accuracy, but research evaluating the effect of these changes on comprehension was needed.
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Dr. Shannon Sheppard described the group’s recently published findings, which demonstrate the impact of text format changes on both speed and comprehension.
Students in kindergarten through 8th grade were assessed with a semantic word task and a passage task, each including questions to test their reading comprehension. While the semantic word task was measured in milliseconds and did not deliver significant speed improvements, the student’s accuracy did improve by 18% with their best text format. The passage task required the students to read a passage and answer questions. Here, the students recorded an average gain of 21% in reading speed and a simultaneous increase of 21% in their accuracy in answering the questions, reflecting an important improvement in comprehension.
Shannon noted that the students’ best formats were relatively evenly distributed across the 6 formats used. If developers used one of the six formats, for example, even the one with 20% of the students performing best, they would leave 80% of the students at a disadvantage. These students have less access to the information presented and are disadvantaged. The “one-format-fits-all” presentation of text creates an equity issue.
Moving Toward Personalized Reading Format Implementation Models
The growing body of research is an essential first step in delivering evidence-based reading solutions. Developing implementation models that allow the use of personalized reading formats in an educational setting is also required. Students must be assessed to determine their best reading format, and that format must be used to deliver reading content in each student’s best format.
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Dr. Susanne Nobles described a pilot implementation research study that is underway. Readability Matters developed a voice AI-based assessment tool which is used to pass each student’s best format to the ReadWorks reading platform. ReadWorks then delivers daily reading content in that format to the student. Literacy experts Dr. Geral Tindal and Dr. Joseph Nese from the University of Oregon are leading the investigation and will publish the results.
What can Educators do Today?
Research, development, and implementation planning are all in progress. Kathy closed by addressing the burning question, “What can I do today?”
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She reviewed Readability Features in commonly available tools from Adobe, Google, Microsoft, and more; these are listed on the Readability Tech Tips Aa Report. Additionally, she pointed participants to the Readability Sandbox, a demo tool for playing with readability features, and the new Exquisitive Readability Explorer tutor.
Moving Forward
The presenters enjoyed the engaged and interested group. Participants were excited to see the possibility of supporting better learning for all students and the rigerous research being connected to the practice of personalizing text formats. The focus on comprehension beyond the speed measures was called out as a breakthrough in the reasearch.
UDL-Con brought together an amazing set of professionals, all interested in improving educational outcomes for all learners. We are excited to work with many new collaborators in future research projects and implementation pilots.
Interested in getting involved? Connect with us!
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Dr. Shannon Sheppard, Dr. Susanne Nobles, and Kathy Crowley
Learn more
The Adobe Proof of Concept
ReadWorks.org
Readability Wiki
Readability Matters’ Research Page
The Readability (research) Consortium
About CAST: CAST is a nonprofit education research and development organization that created the Universal Design for Learning framework and UDL Guidelines, now used all over the world to make learning more inclusive.
About UDL: Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn.
