Technological advancements and the shift toward improving accessibility allow marginalized groups, including the elderly, to participate more fully in social life. The development of audiotechnologies, among others, provides people with visual impairments or other reading difficulties the opportunity to access content that was previously out of reach.

However, reading is not just about books or newspapers, which can be successfully replaced by audiobooks, podcasts, or radio. Facebook events, cultural institution newsletters, or notices displayed in trams and buses – the written word is an inseparable element of today’s digitized world, one that cannot be entirely replaced by audio communication.

In our project, we focus on the issue of reading among the elderly; however, we do not intend to devise more ways to convert the written word into speech. Instead, we want to understand the actual roots of reading difficulties in seniors and what we can do to make them read more willingly, ensuring that reading brings more pleasure than frustration. By collaborating directly with the target group, we will develop solutions aimed at improving the reading process to make it simpler and more enjoyable. The resulting recommendations will be shared with libraries, municipal offices, and other interested institutions.

Our project combines a scientific approach to reading research – using eyetracking and standardized cognitive tests – with the practical, workshop-based Living Lab approach. Providing a corpus of high-quality visual data regarding reading will be a valuable contribution to the scientific community. Equally important to us, however, is that through dialogue, workshops, and marketing campaigns, we better understand the practical side of elderly reading and, together with seniors, make social spaces better adapted to their needs and capabilities.

We also invite you to visit the project website: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61590352515393

Project coordinator: mgr Anna Wilkosz