PROJECTS
Since 2019, the EdTech Center @ World Education has partnered with Adobe and The Readability Consortium to advance the field of digital text readability. Our contribution to this work is to help mitigate the challenges that adults who are dependent on their smartphones for accessing information online face when reading digital text.
Under this work, our team supports the field testing of the Adobe Acrobat Reader mobile application and the Liquid Mode feature in diverse learning settings, including adult literacy classrooms, vocational learning, and at the workplace. Liquid Mode is a free tool built into mobile versions of Adobe Reader. Using it, users can change characteristics of digital text in PDFs to align with their preferences. What we learn in these settings will support EdTech Center advising Adobe on Liquid Mode product development and supporting the development of onboarding resources. More broadly, we’ll share our findings in a range of publications and in national conference presentations.
To date, we have conducted field testing in US through in partnership with Adult Basic Education providers and in Malawi, through World Education’s Bantwana Initiative. Our field testing ensures that the needs of adult learners are considered in Liquid Mode design and functionality. Our goal for this effort is to put a potentially powerful tool for making reading easier into the hands of adult literacy learners in the US and worldwide.
