Overseas Travel to Olso and Melbourne

Dyslexia is a widespread cognitive specific learning difficulty (SpLD), effecting around 10% of the UK population. Searching is a widespread, almost ubiquitous activity which users with dyslexia will undertake on a daily basis. In the past decade, work done in the centre for HCID design has begun to tackle the issue i.e. to understand the impact of dyslexia on users search behaviour. An initial pilot study carried out by HCID examined the general pattern of behaviour, but subsequent work with George Buchanan of the University of Melbourne established the impact of short-term or working memory on browsing results lists and documents. It was found that dyslexic users where judging fewer documents than control users as being irrelevant and there was a strong correlation between this and users short-term memory. This was confirmed by using eye tracking data that showed that dyslexic users did much more backtracking on pages (more up and down eye movements), providing evident that users were forgetting information and having to re-read text. We propose to arrange visits to academics in Oslo Metropolitan University in Norway and the University in Melbourne Australia to build expertise for an EPSRC proposal under development.

The UK has a population of around 60 million people, which gives an estimate of 6 million people who have dyslexia. These dyslexic users need search tools which serve their information needs better, which will assist social inclusion. Providing better tools for this large cohort is likely to provide better outcomes for search with positive impacts on the UK economy. The workplace is a therefore a particularly important context to consider. The Equality Act of 2010 requires employers to make reasonable adjustments to any element of a job which places people with impairments at a substantial disadvantage. Employers who require their employees to use enterprise search on a regular basis, will need to ensure that the services they provide meet the needs of the act. UK Information providers and search software designers who provide software and service to employers will therefore be interested in our work to address the clear issues identified and any solutions we propose. The research proposal we are planning will develop our activity further; with the help of international colleagues with expertise in different aspects of the work, it is our stated goal to improve information retrieval software and services to address the issue of social inclusion, economic benefit and legal requirements.