The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) recently awarded a Wichita State University faculty member $150,000 to further develop a smartphone application that allows visually impaired people to read materials rich in visual content.  

Dr. Darren DeFrain, professor of English and director of Wichita State’s Writing Program, has spent five years developing the Vizling app, which merges the visual and text components of graphic novels, comic books and other image-heavy literature.  

With comic books or graphic novels, stories aren’t always told in a linear format. There are visual clues as to where the readers’ eyes should go next. With Vizling, users can drag their fingers across a device and visualize which way the story is set up. They can also touch different areas of the screen to find out what's on the screen. 

For instance, DeFrain said, there’s one two-page spread from a comic book he teaches where one of the characters is freaking out, “and you see all this stuff happening all over the page.” 

He can verbally tell a visually impaired person what’s happening, he said, “but that doesn’t convey all the different things that are going on in the character’s head. If you're fully sighted, when you open up that page, your eye goes where it wants to go. You interpret it at your own speed and in your own way.” 

The Vizling app is twofold: There’s audio to read the words of the book out loud, and sensory clues that offer directional insight to the reader. 

“We've got the traditional audio tracks that would explain things that visually impaired people are used to working with, but they can also use haptic or vibrating response so that they can see the preferred way that you're supposed to read the comic,” DeFrain said. 

DeFrain and former Wichita State student Aaron Rodriguez began working on Vizling in 2018 and have spent the past several years working to optimize the app.  

“Vizling has recently introduced several new features, including enhanced user customization options, support for additional languages and improved accessibility features,” DeFrain said.  

The NEH award is earmarked for the ongoing development and testing of new features, including “extensive user testing to assess usability and accessibility, iterative design improvements based on feedback and the integration of cutting-edge accessibility technology,” DeFrain said.  

Jaryd Porter, a graduate student in Wichita State from Lawrence, has been working in research and development of Vizling for two years. His primary responsibility has been to translate images into written text.  

“Our written descriptions impart what is important to portray and understand about an object, character or interaction within a given space and give an objective description,” Porter said. “In a larger description of each page, we give a more subjective interpretation and summary of the events taking place. In both contexts, there would come an audio translation to assist Vizling’s users in understanding what is happening within a given panel, page or in different spaces within a panel.” 

Even in its most basic application, he said, Vizling can improve the format of an audio book by having the user explore the page along with the provided audio. 

“With visual language, there’s a major reliance on spatial awareness, which can’t be captured in audio alone, which is why it’s important that a user navigates the app and chooses how they would like to navigate a narrative, an image or text,” Porter explained.  

Vizling is making a new genre of literature accessible to visually impaired people, Porter said.  

“It might reflect the general attitude of academia that comics and graphic narratives have often been overlooked as literature, but they have such a rich history and provide a unique structure for communication,” he said. “Vizling is a way to make that unique visual language accessible for readers who are visually impaired or benefit from a closer, more in-depth, customizable way to explore visual language. I’ve learned a lot through my work with Vizling and I hope to carry what I’ve learned with me for the rest of my life, in and outside of academia.” 

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