The National Endowment for Humanities has awarded a Wichita State University researcher $100,000 for his work on developing an application that allows visually impaired people to read comic books and graphic novels, the university announced Thursday in a news release.
Darren DeFrain, associate professor of English and director of WSU's writing program, has been working with former student Aaron Rodriguez, who is now a graduate student at Florida State University, to create Vizling.
According to the news release, the app helps visually impaired individuals understand the page layout, flow and movement of comics and graphic novels, which are usually not told in linear format and include visual clues that point to where the readers’ eyes should go next.
"If you're fully sighted, when you open up that page, your eye goes where it wants to go," DeFrain said in the WSU news release. "You interpret it at your own speed and in your own way."
With Vizling, users can use their fingers to drag across and see which way things are set up. It offers audio to read the words of the book, and sensory clues offer directional insight to the reader.
Vizling will also serve as a platform, similar to Netflix, to provide free and accessible access to a library of comics and graphic novels.
With the $100,000 award, DeFrain says he plans to focus on prototyping the app, and also to connect with Wichita State’s Training and Technology Team.
“Darren DeFrain is a risk-taker with entrepreneurial spirit who draws from his expertise to do something completely different in the world of apps,” said Andrew Hippisley, dean of the Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at WSU, in the news release. “And he is a member of the English department, demonstrating that the humanities brings its own special contribution to software design, a distinctly human contribution.”
