The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) recently awarded a Wichita State University faculty member $150,000 to further develop a smartphone application that allows visually impaired people to read materials rich in visual content.
Dr. Darren DeFrain, professor of English and director of Wichita State’s Writing Program, has spent five years developing the Vizling app, which merges the visual and text components of graphic novels, comic books and other image-heavy literature.
With comic books or graphic novels, stories aren’t always told in a linear format. There are visual clues as to where the readers’ eyes should go next. With Vizling, users can drag their fingers across a device and visualize which way the story is set up. They can also touch different areas of the screen to find out what’s on the screen.