RETHINK
READING:
BrightPage is an innovation in the digital reading experience.
One App,
Many Uses
We've created mobile apps for both, iOS and Android OS to provide you with a native experience on smaller screens. Download the free app and start scrolling today!
Results from Our Survey
We wanted to back everything by science and research. So we conducted a Pollfish survey of 100 people, in which we tested out various problems we thought people might have around conventional ways of reading text. Here’s what we found:
The BrightScroll Test
We showed the participants the same text with our newly designed BrightScroll technology. In this application, we moved the text through the screen, while giving each word enough visibility to make it stand out. Here’s how scrolling text would look like without BrightScroll:
You can see motion blur, meaning you’re not able to see any word. With BrightScroll, we made each word appear crisp and comprehensible, even at speeds several times the normal reading speed:
So, what were the results? They were amazing!
Our App is Live!
We welcome you to try our free product and share your feedback with us because we want BrightPage to be your preferred text viewer. Let's make reading fun, intuitive and accessible for everyone.
When was the last time you enjoyed reading text on a digital screen? We’re not talking about the content, but the actual reading experience. Was it on a PDF reader? Was it a smartphone, a tablet or a computer screen? We’ve seen so much innovation in technology, yet it seems like the way we read text has remained pretty much the same. Why has this been the case? Why have we always tried to make reading a more pleasant experience by simply adding other elements like audio, speech or video?
But what about text?
Digital Screens are Not Limited
Physical books, magazines, newspapers and other reading materials have been on a decline for many years now. With the rise of PDF viewers and text readers, people have embraced the transition to digital screens. However, it seems like while we’ve moved reading on paper to reading on screens, the text still looks the same. The reality is that on a screen, there’s a lot more potential of showing how text should look like to increase comfort and speed and enhance the overall reading experience.
Screaming for Innovation
We haven’t seen a lot of innovation done around text reader apps. With predictive writing, modern devices have advanced AIs that understand certain patterns on how you write. But not the same can be said about how text is presented and how users can read on screens. We still have to read through the pages of text, constantly moving our eyes while glaring at screens, causing eye fatigue and stress.
There’s not much work done to offer accessibility to everyone when it comes to digital text viewing. Central field loss, commonly referred to as the macular disease is the leading cause of blindness in the western world. Individuals with this condition have a blind spot in the middle. While they usually have peripheral vision, they require tools to assist in reading. According to the Macular Society, the best way to read is to have a steady eye strategy, meaning that the eye is kept steady while the text is moved.
Not designed for Everyone
We Identified Opportunities
BrightScroll:
A Technology Backed by Science
We started to think about how we could make text reading a better experience. Could we not make the text move in a way that it mimicked the natural eye movement? Instead of making the book or page move back and forth, why not make the text move automatically while keeping the eye steady? We were struck by an idea, and we called it BrightScroll - a predictive text reader designed to make the reading experience more enjoyable, fast and easy for all eyes. Instead of sticking the text on a page and making the users go through the hassle of reading through it, we started work on a technology that would allow them to sit back, relax and let the text move by itself. We were on to something very interesting.
Better than Magnifiers
With zero training, almost all visually impaired participants read faster with BrightScroll than their own optical magnifiers (Moshtael et al., 2020).
Looking at the illustration above, you can see that each person above the diagonal line was able to read faster with BrightScroll instead of their magnifier. What was so interesting was the fact that they’d been using magnifiers for a long time to read text and yet they were able to read faster with BrightScroll without any training.
Fivefold Speed Boost
With absolutely no training, fully sighted participants were able to read on average, 5 times faster with BrightScroll than regular scrolling (Moshtael et al., 2016).
200 words per minute is the average speed for normal vision. With BrightScroll, these participants were averaging almost 1000 words per minute. At that point, we knew that we'd created something that would revolutionise digital reading.
The Founders
A Technology Packed with Benefits
Through our surveys and first-hand experience of BrightScroll, we saw many benefits of using it. It allowed users to read documents much faster, saving them time while being easy on the eyes. It felt natural because the text moved how the eyes move when reading. Since the focus was on the scroll and not the different parts of a page, there were fewer distractions. 85% of the Pollfish participants said that BrightScroll would encourage them to read more of something they otherwise wouldn’t. It removed the clutter, meaning no more squinting on the small phone screens.
BrightPage:
The home of BrightScroll
With so much positive feedback and actual results in surveys, we decided to translate the Brightscoll technology into an application. We decided to embark on a commercial journey and create a startup that will get this technology in the hands of the masses. We wanted people to use this technology and benefit from it. And we called it BrightPage.
BrightPage combines all the benefits of BrightScroll with a view of the page, meaning you never get lost, and can easily navigate around your document, allowing you to choose where you want to read. This started off as an interactive PDF viewer and we’re already working on how to integrate other forms of text documents and web pages to further enhance its usability. We want it to be a text viewer for all digital documents.
With BrightPage, you don’t have to manually zoom and you can reflow the text (similar to Adobe’s liquid mode). The application allows you to do both - skimming as well as in-depth reading. And it’s not an application only designed for people with perfect vision. Instead, it is equally convenient for those who are visually impaired, supporting eccentric viewing and steady eye strategy. Since it removed the need for eye movements, it can also support dyslexics, minimising erratic eye movements while reading. We also added cloud storage functionality, allowing users to have the files available on different devices.
Reading aid for the visually impaired
Reading intensive professions
small screens
Educational presentations
assist users with dyslexia
Who Can Benefit from BrightPage Text Reader?