I think Walt Crawford does a bit of rhetorical violence in his summary of one recent conference article (Paul Mercieca, E-book Acceptance, ’ware PDF, or do what I did and read the Google-to-HTML version).
The article is about reading class materials onscreen versus in print, that old chestnut that will never go away in my lifetime. I rarely see the print snobs conceding that familiarity with the medium is part of the problem here, that people won’t read extended texts onscreen simply because they’re not used to it. That, however, will take care of itself in a few decades, so I’m not terribly worried about it.
Crawford trots out the old etext-causes-eyestrain argument, barely noting that it relates to PDFs only. What he doesn’t say, though the article clearly does, is that students evinced much less eyestrain and general annoyance when presented with a Microsoft Reader text—a text, in other words, designed for onscreen reading.
I know this seems an obvious conclusion. Design for the medium, improve readability. Ever seen incunabula? They’re wretched, from a readability perspective, because cut type just doesn’t have the same affordances as pen-and-ink, and the first typefaces were slavish imitations of manuscript hands. Once printing got away from needing to look just like manuscripts, readability improved fairly rapidly.
The first onscreen-versus-print usability test I ever read about, though, utterly ignored questions of appropriateness of design to medium, pitting a color print copy of a popular newsmagazine against a grotty black-and-white (not even grayscale, if I recall correctly!) scan-to-PDF! They crowed mightily on the basis of that stupidly skewed test that onscreen reading would never, ever catch on. I’m deeply suspicious of print-versus-onscreen deathmatches now. I frankly don’t believe the speed difference Crawford cites; I want to know how those numbers were arrived at.
I myself cheerfully concede that I read PDFs slowly onscreen. The typical PDF—Cites and Insights no exception—isn’t designed for that! A well-designed web page, however, reads as quickly (in my admittedly subjective estimation) as print. An MS Reader ebook—well, I admit I get dumped out of immersion because of design flaws (both in MS Reader and books tailored to it); I know much too much about .lit, there’s no two ways about that. I used to read decently-designed .lit books on the planes home from Cleveland, however, and they felt pretty much printlike to me.
Nor do I completely buy Jakob Nielsen’s line on this subject, as Nielsen’s own site demonstrates that he wouldn’t know a readable onscreen design if it bit him in tender spots.
(And no, if you’re wondering, Crawford won’t do an HTML version of C&I. I asked. Not only did I ask, I offered to do the conversion and design work for him, being an opportunistic sort of wench who could make good use of the wide exposure such a task would give me. I’m not angry about it—even if I were, I’d have no particular right to be—just disappointed. Though I admit the print-on-demand book idea he’s playing with is probably better for him.)
Anyway… at the end of that snippet, Crawford asks peevishly why on earth anyone should make reluctant undergraduates read onscreen. Oh, boy, questions begged! Here are a few of my answers:
- The material is not available in print, or can’t be got at except electronically owing to travel requirements or rarity or fragility or whatever. Libraries and archives haven’t been undertaking digitization projects for their health, after all. There honestly is stuff online that can’t be got at any other reasonable way. If it’s good, relevant stuff—I’d make them read it, sure.
- If I knew in advance that a student of mine was blind or heavily visually disabled, I would intentionally skew my syllabus toward non-PDF electronic materials for accessibility’s sake. It’s just the right thing to do. Of course I’d also be on the horn to DAISY to see what my options were for print-only materials. But if the question is “would I force my sighted students to read onscreen so that their blind colleague would have an easier time?” the answer is an unequivocal yes.
- The material was designed for onscreen perusal such that printing it is lossy. Heavily hyperlinked texts lose data when printed. If I expect my students to tool about a bit and click some links, I have no particular compunction about telling them so. I adduce the Cornell Digital Imaging Tutorial as something I’d make students read onscreen.
- The material is interactive. I’m going to get whacked on this one, I know it, because interactivity is one of the buzzwords that the hypertext folks use, and (to tell the truth) I’ve not much more use for them than Crawford. (Though I did enjoy Hamlet on the Holodeck despite the horrid title. Admittedly, though, I read it in a roleplaying context rather than a purely literary one.) The truth is, though, simple little things like the HTML-form-based quizzes in the Cornell tutorial I just linked are interactive, and they’re worthwhile.
- I am making a point about information literacy, online and off-. How the hell are we supposed to teach our students that they can’t believe everything they read anywhere, especially but not entirely online, if we never tell them to read anything online?
Because I am one of those evil e-text proponents, I would assign onscreen reading just to get students familiar with it. I doubt, however, that Crawford would back me on this one, and he’s quite within his rights not to.
