Abstract
Macular disease patients who lost central vision must use their peripheral vision to read slowly. There are some assistive methods proposed to improve their reading experience. Sequence word display methods like RSVP are suited to improve the reading performance of low vision people because it can reduce crowding effect, limit the visual span and do not need saccades. However, the performance of these methods in peripheral reading is not satisfactory. This study is aimed to design a reading assistant system that uses the new display method by fixed gaze to improve patient reading performance and test the effects of the new reading assistant software called NRSVP produced improvement in Chinese peripheral reading speed. Firstly, the software was designed to transform the display style of text in daily life. This software uses OCR and word segmentation technology to pre-process Chinese text, and then display the text word by word in NRSVP mode on the screen to help the central field vision loss patients to read quickly. Then the performance of the NRSVP was tested. Participants were asked to read the text by NRSVP and natural reading mode with a central-scotoma simulator. We analysed the reading rate (characters/min) of the participants simulated as central loss vision. There was an improvement in measures of oral reading speed (90%) with NRSVP than the natural reading mode. These findings illustrate the potential benefits of NRSVP as a reading aid method for the patients who loss central vision.