Do weak readers in rural India read Same Language Subtitles

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Same Language Subtitling (SLS) of audio-visual content on mainstream TV entertainment to improve reading literacy at a population scale was first conceived and piloted in India. SLS is now being scaled up to ensure that the reading skills of one billion TV viewers, including 600 million weak readers, remain on a lifelong pathway to practice, progress, and proficiency. Will weak readers ignore or try to read along with SLS? A collaborative research study between IISc (Indian Institute of Science) and IIM A (Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad) eye-tracking study investigates this with 136 weak readers, with an average age of 24 years, drawn from a remote village in Rajasthan state, by showing them popular Hindi film clips of dialog and songs, with and without SLS. Based on the investigation of eye-tracking data, we observed the attention of weak readers and quantified their amount of engagement with the subtitles in the video clips. We found approximately 20%-30% more eye movements in the subtitle
region, and users were engaged in unprompted reading while watching video clips with SLS.
We observed that saccadic eye movement is a good indicator to quantify the amount of engagement with SLS, and saccadic regression can further differentiate weak readers. We developed an interactive web-based analytics tool for visually exploring eye-tracking data. Eye-tracking studies of weak readers watching subtitles are rare, and ours may be the first with subjects from rural India.