conditions. Different contexts impose different
constraints. For example, driving may prevent the user
from holding the device.
Since focusing on the display of a mobile phone may be
difficult while walking or driving, Vadas et al. showed
that audio is an acceptable modality for mobile
comprehension of text [7]. Although audio has been
used in screen readers for blind or visually impaired
people[1][4][5], there has been no clear understanding
how to combine the audio modality with visual
presentation for sighted people on mobile devices. Our
research question is: how do we help mobile users have
a continuous reading experience while switching
contexts?
In this paper, we present a user study with 10 mobile
users designed to understand the differences between
reading web pages under four different conditions:
visual-reading, audio-listening, manual-switching
between visual and audio, and auto-switching between
them. The web pages are read with frequent context
switching, i.e. from sitting to walking or from walking to
sitting. The results showed that auto-switching not only
provides significantly fewer missteps while walking than
visual-reading, but it also provides the best reading
experience.
Read4Me Browser is a prototype system we have built
to support the presented study, including the four
tested conditions. However, because of space
limitation, we don’t introduce Read4Me browser here.