Investigating the effect of adding visual content to textual search interfaces on accessibility of dyslexic users

Abstract

The problem of the study is to investigate whether adding visual content such as icons to textual search user interfaces improves performance for dyslexic users. Eight dyslexics and eight non-dyslexics (controls) Benghazi-school students, of ages twelve to seventeen years, completed sixteen search tasks in four conditions: word, icon, word/icon, and icon/word in a list layout. Results showed that both dyslexics and non-dyslexics generally benefited from using icons in the interface. Particularly, for both groups, significantly shorter search times were recorded in the icon and the word/icon conditions than the word condition. There were no significant differences in search times between the word/icon and the icon/word conditions. Also, both groups preferred the two mixed icon-word conditions over the word or the icon conditions. These results suggest that accessible search interfaces should use icons and words (text) rather than only words; this should satisfy users’ performance and preference for both dyslexics and non-dyslexics.