Suman Bhandary Reading and comprehension by billions of readers using scripts other than Latin remains fundamentally under-researched. This is even more pressing as younger generations are reading overwhelmingly on screens, and many communities prioritize small mobile devices, for which there is even less research. Despite the importance of reading to learning and the function of communities, empirical research with genuine interdisciplinary contributions has been sparse. Moreover, only recently have technical solutions enabled a deeper understanding of how we perceive letterforms and words, with almost exclusive focus on the Latin script, with sparse publications for Arabic, Cyrillic, Japanese, Chinese, etc.
Bangla is a script with multiple dialects used by approximately 230 million people in regions across India and Bangladesh. Despite having a rich literature base, the Bangla printing industry was forced to adopt type design conventions from Latin. Readability research for Bangla script (primarily through linguistic investigations) has been sparse and not been conducted with consideration of typographic parameters, as can be observed in readability researches for other scripts.
The 2021 UNICEF Survey of Children’s Education in Bangladesh demonstrates approximately 39% of young readers between ages 7-14 with reading difficulties using their native/local script, Bangla. This presentation will initiate a discourse addressing how the reading performance is affected in the Bangla typographical environments? What are the existing models and their suitability to analyze readability assessments for Bangla? How do the recommended text formats vary between populations who are “reading to learn” (with focus on information extraction/comprehension)? Does the ability/choice to control typographic settings of a document by native Bangla readers in modern-day technological environments, affect readability?
As a native Bangla user, the urge to extend the discourse for a low resource script through interdisciplinary pathways in research remains dire and hopefully initiates a conversation amongst world’s language and design communities.