Making Reading Less Intimidating

Liveink.com is a site for sore eyes. Actually, Live Ink is a "reading technology" created by Walker Reading Technologies, a Rochester, MN company that aims to make reading books "easy on the eyes" for kids and to improve comprehension. The software company has created a library of more than 150 classics on two CD-ROMs at $29.95 each, one for younger readers (grades 4 through 10) and another for older readers (grade 10 to adult). The books include O Pioneers!, David Copperfield, Little Women, and A Tale of Two Cities.

So how does Live Ink work? Basically, the long lines of horizontal text that we've become accustomed to when reading books are broken into shorter fragments. Prose appears onscreen the way a free verse poem might, on dark-colored backgrounds, and the words appear in bright colors. "We try to present a book in a more enlivened pattern," says Randall Walker, M.D., an internist at the Mayo Clinic who founded the company with his brother, Stan, an ophthalmologist. Breaking down sentences improves the brain's ability to extract meaning, he contends. The brothers hope that the system will aid dyslexic, struggling, and reluctant readers and reduce eyestrain in all readers. Chuck Vogel, a ninth grade teacher, reports his students find the cascading format "non-threatening," don't spend as much time re-reading text, and are more likely to read aloud. "They tend to enjoy reading more with the format," he says. Visit www.liveink.com.