Enhancing Accessible Reading for All with Universally Designed Augmented Reality – AReader: From Audio Narration to Talking AI Avatars

This paper introduces AReader, an innovative approach that combines Universal Design (UD) and Augmented Reality (AR) to enhance the universal accessibility of paper-based textual content. It targets a broad audience, including individuals with print and situational disabilities, emphasizing that reading challenges can affect anyone. The paper details the practical implementation of UD in AR, focusing on AR's context-aware, multimodal capabilities, and highlights a novel Visual Screen Reader feature. This feature is presented in two concepts: Text-to-Audio Narration with Visual Reading Guide and Text-to-AI-Video Narration. The paper also outlines a set of features and hands-on UD practices adaptable to a wide variety of AR applications. User testing has demonstrated that the prototype effectively enhances reading accessibility and usability across various user groups. The findings suggest that integrating UD principles with AR technologies can foster inclusive solutions, benefiting not only individuals with special needs but also contributing to broader societal inclusion.