We present work that explores whether the asynchronous peer-topeer communication capabilities of email can be made accessible to illiterate populations in the developing world. Building on metaphors from traditional communication systems such as postal mail, and relevant design principles established by previous research into text-free interfaces, we designed and evaluated a prototype asynchronous communication application built on standard email protocols. We considered different message formats – text, freeform ink, audio, and video + audio – and via iterative usage and design sessions, determined that video + audio was the most viable. Design alternatives for authentication processes were also explored. Our prototype was refined over three usability iterations, and the final version evaluated in a twostage study with 20 illiterate users from an urban slum in Bangalore, India. Our results are mixed: On the one hand, the results show that users can understand the concept of video mail. They were able to successfully complete tasks ranging from account setup to login to viewing and creating mail, but required assistance from an online audio assistant. On the other hand, there were some surprising challenges such as a consistent difficulty understanding the notion of asynchronicity. The latter suggests that more work on the paradigm is required before the benefits of email can be brought to illiterate users.

Multimodal interfaces with little or no text have been shown to be useful for users with low literacy. However, this research has not differentiated between the needs of the fully illiterate and semiliterate – those who have basic literacy but cannot read and write fluently. Text offers a fast and unambiguous mode of interaction for literate users and the exposure to text may allow for incidental improvement of reading skills. We conducted two studies that explore how semiliterate users with very little education might benefit from a combination of text and audio as compared to illiterate and literate users. Results show that semiliterate users reduced their use of audio support even during the first hour of use and over several hours this reduction was accompanied by a gain in visual word recognition; illiterate users showed no similar improvement. Semiliterate users should thus be treated differently from illiterate users in interface design.

Abstract — Featherweight multimedia devices combine audio with non-electronic visual displays (e.g., paper). Because of their low cost, customizability, durability, storage capacity, and energy efficiency, they are well-suited for education and information dissemination among illiterate and semi-literate people. We present a taxonomy of featherweight multimedia devices and also derive design recommendations from our experiences deploying featherweight multimedia in the agriculture and health domains in India. We found that with some initial guidance, illiterate users can quickly learn to use and enjoy the device, especially if they are taught by peers. A Index Terms—Audio, illiteracy, information dissemination

The literacy level of a significant part of the Brazilian population is insufficient for a proficient use of computers and for an autonomous access to digital contents as those currently available on the Internet. Although this problem also exists in other developing countries, its features depend on many sociocultural and educational factors that distinguish each country. Thus, most of the studies on digital inclusion of illiterate users undertaken abroad, as is often the case in studies for countries in Asia and Africa, are not totally suited to Brazil’s context, which is mainly characterized by a higher prevalence of functional illiteracy rather than by full illiteracy, and in which multiligualism is marginal. Hence, besides the use of icons as supporters in understanding digital contents, as often proposed for those other countries, we particularize the problem to Brazil by investigating how icons reinforce the reading skills of semi-literate users, a key issue given the literacy level of many Brazilian citizens. Thus, this paper addresses both the use of icons in supporting digital content navigation and their role in scaffolding limited reading skills when accessing digital contents.

Information Technology has had significant impact on the society and has touched all aspects of our lives. So far, computers and expensive devices have fueled this growth. The challenge now is to take this success of IT to its next level where IT services can be accessed by masses. “Masses ” here mean the people who (a) are not yet IT literate and/or (b) do not have the purchase power to use the current IT delivery mechanisms (PC centric model) and/or (c) do not find current IT solutions and services relevant to their life or business. Interestingly, a huge portion of the world’s population falls in this category. To enable the IT access to such masses, this workshop focuses on easy-touse and affordable, yet powerful, user interfaces that can be used by this population.

Many online articles contain useful know-how knowledge about GUI applications. Even though these articles tend to be richly illustrated by screenshots, no system has been designed to take advantage of these screenshots to visually search know-how articles effectively. In this paper, we present a novel system to index and search software knowhow articles that leverages the visual correspondences between screenshots. To retrieve articles about an application, users can take a screenshot of the application to query the system and retrieve a list of articles containing a matching screenshot. Useful snippets such as captions, references, and nearby text are automatically extracted from the retrieved articles and shown alongside with the thumbnails of the matching screenshots as excerpts for relevancy judgement. Retrieved articles are ranked by a comprehensive set of visual, textual, and site features, whose weights are learned by RankSVM. Our prototype system currently contains 150k articles that are classified into walkthrough, book, gallery, and general categories. We demonstrated the system’s ability to retrieve matching screenshots for a wide variety of programs, across language boundaries, and provide subjectively more useful results than keyword-based web and image search engines.

While platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk have generated excitement as a potential source of income in developing regions, to date there remains little evidence that such opportunities have transformed livelihoods for low-income workers. In this study, we analyze the usability barriers that prevent those with basic digital literacy skills from accomplishing simple tasks on Mechanical Turk. Based on our observations, we design new user interfaces that reduce the barriers to task comprehension and execution. Via a study of 49 low-income workers in urban India, we demonstrate that new design elements – including simplified user interfaces, simplified task instructions, and language localization – are absolutely necessary to enable low-income workers to participate in and earn money using Mechanical Turk. We synthesize our findings into a set of design recommendations, as well as a realistic analysis of the potential for microtasking sites to deliver supplemental income to lower-income communities.

Abstract — One of the greatest challenges in designing applications for developing communities is that potential users may have limited literacy. Past work in UI design for low-literate users has focused on illiteracy as the inability to read per se, with little recognition to other cognitive differences between literate and non-literate users. In this paper, we investigate the correlation between literacy and cognitive skills for conceptual abstraction using video-based skills training. We performed a controlled experiment that compared 28 non-literate and 28 literate participants from lowincome communities in India. Results confirm that both the groups did worse when a skill required generalization from instructional material, compared with the case when instructional material was specifically and exactly tailored to the skill. Literate participants did better than non-literate participants all-around on this learning task. In addition, we found that diversification of examples within instructions helped literate participants in transfer of learning, but did not help non-literate participants. We conclude that ICT UI and content for low-literate users should be sensitive to issues beyond strict illiteracy, to additional cognitive differences among these users. Index Terms—Low-literate, cognitive skill, abstraction, instructional video, transfer learning O I.