Towards Non-Latin Text and Layout Personalization for Enhanced Readability

2026-02-28

AI Summary

This study addresses the unclear mechanisms by which character and typographic features influence readability in non-Latin, non-segmented writing systems, where linguistically informed personalization methods are lacking. It introduces, for the first time, a part-of-speech (POS)-based dynamic typesetting strategy for Khmer and Japanese scripts, employing bolding and syntactic coloring to achieve script-aware text visualization. By integrating natural language processing—specifically POS tagging and syntactic parsing—with visual design principles, the approach enhances reading comprehension and memory retention without increasing cognitive load. User experiments demonstrate significant improvements among 43 Khmer readers in both comprehension (p=0.03) and recall (p=0.04), while 10 Japanese readers exhibited similar positive trends, albeit with a slight reduction in reading speed.

Technology Category

• Natural Language Processing: Lexical Semantics and Morphology
• Computer Vision: Language and Vision
• Search and Optimization: Evaluation and Analysis

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Practical large-scale studies of user experience
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web learning to rank, online learning, and counterfactual learning for ranking
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs

Abstract

Reading has always been an integral part of both professional and personal life. Character and layout recognition and understanding by computers are well-explored areas. Nevertheless, how characters and layout are read and perceived by humans remains relatively underexplored. This work contributes to the field of human-document interaction (HDI) by investigating the effects of character and layout personalization on readability. The paper presents an empirical study on how parts-of-speech (POS)-based character and layout modifications can lead to overall improvements in both reading comprehension and memorization for two non-segmented, non-Latin writing systems: Khmer and Japanese. The experimental results from 43 participants suggest that, by bolding POS-derived content words, Khmer readers perform better on both reading comprehension and memorisation tasks, with a significant effect (p-values of 0.03 and 0.04, respectively). A similar overall tendency is also observed in a pilot study among Japanese readers (10 participants) using syntactic color-coding. In addition, the analyses of reading time, answering time, and perceived difficulty reveal that the proposed text styling technique does not increase any perceived difficulty, cognitive load, or reading effort for the Khmer readers. However, the Japanese readers experienced a decrease in reading speed. This study and its findings represent a significant step towards enabling dynamic, script-dependent personalization of character and layout to optimize human readability.

Problem

• readability
• non-Latin scripts
• text personalization
• layout personalization
• human-document interaction

Innovation

• human-document interaction
• text personalization
• non-Latin scripts
• readability enhancement
• POS-based styling