5 ms·

I was born with pretty severe strabismus and underwent a few major eye surgeries throughout my life. One of the side effects of being born with this condition

I was born with pretty severe strabismus and underwent a few major eye surgeries throughout my life. One of the side effects of being born with this condition is missing lines when reading a book. Growing up with computers, I always found it a little difficult to follow long lines of text or the next line as I scroll. I'm a lot older now and hardly have these problems, if ever at all. I've pretty much perfected guessing varying levels of depth perception, I guess, as this effects my stereoscopic vision. I'm not sure what goes on at the neurological level or 'lower level', however. Anyway, you don't know how natural it felt to read this. It almost worked too well, so I would like to test it out a little more before, just because I'm a natural sceptic. Regardless, kudos on this great work and creative thinking. And yes, it almost did feel like words 'moved' a little sometimes when I was a child and was still developing strong optic/extraocular muscles. It is difficult to explain/articulate, especially since it happened such a long time ago and I'm working from memory, though.

welder 14y ago
Try this: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/beeline-reader/lcacgebkomahcbghabmikokgjkflmlko https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/beeline-reader/lca... It color codes lines aiming to solve missing or loosing your place while reading.
- kafkaesque 14y ago
  Thanks! I gave it a quick whirl and couldn't get it working on websites. It never captured the proper text (e.g., on latimes.com). I'll try it out tonight.
  - welder 14y ago
    It was hastily written for a 24hr hackathon so yea it can be improved. It finds the largest block of text on the page and assumes that's the important content. If the comments section is larger than the article text, the extension incorrectly uses the comments. If you find it helps your reading please email me and I'll take time to improve and fix it.
- Anm 14y ago
  Admittedly, I didn't try it in any real world setting, but my gut reaction was horror. Even reading through the example paragraph, I did not find the gradients as useful landmarks. But it does make me wonder if other forms of spatial landmarks could be employed in large paragraph text. Perhaps enlarge the start of each, if only for a couple of words, in a way that quickly tappers back to the normal text height. Extreme run-on sentences might require subclauses to be highlighted similarly. Line spacing should accommodate the extra needed height, but remain regular, making the whole document appear double spaced. At least, that is the picture in my head. It might not do any better than this Beeline reader.
  - thisisnotatest 14y ago
    +1. The gradient just makes the page look confusing, and my eyes gained none of the imagined advantage of "you were just looking at red, so look for red... look for red... there's the next line!" I might actually like it better if it just colored one line red, the next line blue, and so on. Absolute positioning instead of all this clever gradient stuff.
kafkaesque 14y ago
Okay, so I played with this for a few more minutes and this is my feedback: I think this would be great for children with reading issues. It would be great as a 'feature' that can be turned on or off on an operating system (on the desktop, tablet, or smartphone). It feels almost like 'training wheels', and as such, I think it'd be great. However, I do now realise that the line underlining the text can be distracting for someone who no longer has trouble following from one line to the next. Also, it is too easy for children to use this as a crutch, and may actually hinder muscle improvement if used for too long. Also, like I said, I don't really have reading issues anymore, but I can see how this could've helped me when I was a kid. I definitely would be interested in reading the results of this tested on kids. As another person said below, my primary schoolteacher also suggested we use a paper to block out the bottom text when reading line by line, and this did help, but I think I was very self-conscious to actually do it all the time. You're on to something! Edit: Added clarification.
Tarrosion 14y ago
I also have strabismus and have undergone some surgery, but I don't find that this helps much. Specifically, my eyes keep jumping below the line which separates the new text from the old. I'd like to see a version where as soon as you start scrolling, the previous page is replaced by background and the new page appears line by line.
return0 14y ago
I am strabismic too, but don't have problems with reading text. In fact, while strabismus affects 3d perception, i don't see how scrolling and reading are affected unless one has double vision.
- kafkaesque 14y ago
  Cool. Not everyone with strabismus has the same symptoms, right? It depends on many factors, as I'm sure you know, which is why I tried to give a bit more info on myself. When I had my third eye surgery (due to my strabismic eyes) around 1995, they told me reading from line to line would be harder at first. And they were right. At this point, though, they had gone into my eyes before I was 5 twice and had cut and then 'reconnected' some nerves. Only my third time was laser. As you may know, knowledge of the causes of this eye problem, especially in the 80s, was pretty minimal. I remember feeling like a guinea pig because they would contradict each other sometimes and say one thing then say they don't fully understand this condition and would have to try different things. And then the "Well, you can try it". What I'm saying is, it's not as clear cut. It's always interesting for me to read others's experience with strabismus, though.
  - napoleond 14y ago
    Another strabismic person weighing in ;) (Is that even the right word? People just call me cross-eyed...) I had eye surgerie(s?) when I was very young and don't really remember them. They probably helped, but I've avoided further surgery due to the "guinea pig" impression you describe, and the fact that I don't feel like my vision is severely inhibited. My depth perception is probably worse than that of other people, but I've never known better (and I think my brain has learned to compensate using a strategy skewed toward motion parallax instead of stereopsis). Anyway, this scrolling method is unreadable to me, for whatever that's worth.
    - kafkaesque 14y ago
      Ah! Hey, I'm willing to agree that it might just be my googly-eyes that this works for :) This question is for all of you with strabismic (yes, it is a word :D) eyes: Do you 'see' 3D movies? Or are all of them flat with red, blue and various outlines on the screen? For me, it's the latter. Now I have no idea if this has to do with this condition or is something else!

welder 14y ago

Try this: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/beeline-reader/lcacgebkomahcbghabmikokgjkflmlko https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/beeline-reader/lca... It color codes lines aiming to solve missing or loosing your place while reading.

kafkaesque 14y ago
Thanks! I gave it a quick whirl and couldn't get it working on websites. It never captured the proper text (e.g., on latimes.com). I'll try it out tonight.
- welder 14y ago
  It was hastily written for a 24hr hackathon so yea it can be improved. It finds the largest block of text on the page and assumes that's the important content. If the comments section is larger than the article text, the extension incorrectly uses the comments. If you find it helps your reading please email me and I'll take time to improve and fix it.
Anm 14y ago
Admittedly, I didn't try it in any real world setting, but my gut reaction was horror. Even reading through the example paragraph, I did not find the gradients as useful landmarks. But it does make me wonder if other forms of spatial landmarks could be employed in large paragraph text. Perhaps enlarge the start of each, if only for a couple of words, in a way that quickly tappers back to the normal text height. Extreme run-on sentences might require subclauses to be highlighted similarly. Line spacing should accommodate the extra needed height, but remain regular, making the whole document appear double spaced. At least, that is the picture in my head. It might not do any better than this Beeline reader.
- thisisnotatest 14y ago
  +1. The gradient just makes the page look confusing, and my eyes gained none of the imagined advantage of "you were just looking at red, so look for red... look for red... there's the next line!" I might actually like it better if it just colored one line red, the next line blue, and so on. Absolute positioning instead of all this clever gradient stuff.

kafkaesque 14y ago

Okay, so I played with this for a few more minutes and this is my feedback: I think this would be great for children with reading issues. It would be great as a 'feature' that can be turned on or off on an operating system (on the desktop, tablet, or smartphone). It feels almost like 'training wheels', and as such, I think it'd be great. However, I do now realise that the line underlining the text can be distracting for someone who no longer has trouble following from one line to the next. Also, it is too easy for children to use this as a crutch, and may actually hinder muscle improvement if used for too long. Also, like I said, I don't really have reading issues anymore, but I can see how this could've helped me when I was a kid. I definitely would be interested in reading the results of this tested on kids. As another person said below, my primary schoolteacher also suggested we use a paper to block out the bottom text when reading line by line, and this did help, but I think I was very self-conscious to actually do it all the time. You're on to something! Edit: Added clarification.

Tarrosion 14y ago

I also have strabismus and have undergone some surgery, but I don't find that this helps much. Specifically, my eyes keep jumping below the line which separates the new text from the old. I'd like to see a version where as soon as you start scrolling, the previous page is replaced by background and the new page appears line by line.

return0 14y ago

I am strabismic too, but don't have problems with reading text. In fact, while strabismus affects 3d perception, i don't see how scrolling and reading are affected unless one has double vision.

kafkaesque 14y ago
Cool. Not everyone with strabismus has the same symptoms, right? It depends on many factors, as I'm sure you know, which is why I tried to give a bit more info on myself. When I had my third eye surgery (due to my strabismic eyes) around 1995, they told me reading from line to line would be harder at first. And they were right. At this point, though, they had gone into my eyes before I was 5 twice and had cut and then 'reconnected' some nerves. Only my third time was laser. As you may know, knowledge of the causes of this eye problem, especially in the 80s, was pretty minimal. I remember feeling like a guinea pig because they would contradict each other sometimes and say one thing then say they don't fully understand this condition and would have to try different things. And then the "Well, you can try it". What I'm saying is, it's not as clear cut. It's always interesting for me to read others's experience with strabismus, though.
- napoleond 14y ago
  Another strabismic person weighing in ;) (Is that even the right word? People just call me cross-eyed...) I had eye surgerie(s?) when I was very young and don't really remember them. They probably helped, but I've avoided further surgery due to the "guinea pig" impression you describe, and the fact that I don't feel like my vision is severely inhibited. My depth perception is probably worse than that of other people, but I've never known better (and I think my brain has learned to compensate using a strategy skewed toward motion parallax instead of stereopsis). Anyway, this scrolling method is unreadable to me, for whatever that's worth.
  - kafkaesque 14y ago
    Ah! Hey, I'm willing to agree that it might just be my googly-eyes that this works for :) This question is for all of you with strabismic (yes, it is a word :D) eyes: Do you 'see' 3D movies? Or are all of them flat with red, blue and various outlines on the screen? For me, it's the latter. Now I have no idea if this has to do with this condition or is something else!