According to the US Department of Education, 54% of US adults read below the 6th grade level with $2.2 trillion annual cost to the US (Gallup study for Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, 2020). Watch a video about The Readability Consortium here [3.09 mins].
The slowest reader in this 3rd Grade class jumped his reading speed by 27 words per minute with changes to only a handful of text attributes. Before this dramatic improvement, he was at risk of being held back a year.
Illustration for The Readability Consortium prospectus. In a study of adults, changing the font attributes jumped one participant’s reading speed by 239 words per minute.
Some illustrations for Readability Research: An Interdisciplinary Approach
The Readability Consortium
A multi-institutional consortium comprised of members from education, non-profits, industry and government. Its lofty goal is to redefine readability for every individual.
Transformative readability research
The consortium pursues its mission by steering collaborative research and engineering thereby empowering designers and readers alike to better navigate our information-intensive digital future.
Creating the Consortium
As a Research Associate for the consortium played a key role in developing communication strategies, presentations and graphic assets which lead to its formation. This work included the logo design, illustrations for The Readability Consortium foundational papers, the design of the Virtual Readability Lab, and multiple data visualizations.
Visualizing the research
Collaborated on multiple research efforts that resulted in a series of papers. Created compelling charts and figures to illustrate findings of this groundbreaking work. Project Lincoln was used to make many of these data visualizations.
Paper
Readability Research: An Interdisciplinary Approach