Reasy is deemed one of those Rapid Sequential Visual Presentation (RSVP) extensions for Firefox. When text is highlighted, it is displayed sequentially in a separate text box to the user. By customizing the display, the user can control how fast and how many words from the block are shown.
Configuration is minimal with this tool. Users are able to change font type, size and colour for the text box with the display settings, while the reading options allows for defining shortcuts and text movement types.
Reasy has major usability issues that should be addressed in the future. For example, the +/- buttons blend right into the background and have no bordering to indicate they are clickable. Similarly, the background for the text display area is opaque. As a result, it just blocks up a huge part of the screen. Making the background somewhat transparent would make using the tool much easier by having some context of where you are in the highlighted section. The ability to speed up the text being displayed is nice, but if the reader misses something, then there is no way of rewinding.
This tool would be useful for those who may not have as strong a reading level as others. As well, it is a way of removing much of the clutter on web pages and a way to display only that which the user may find useful. Although the Reasy extension does have uses, the major usability problems inhibit its potential. There are many other text parsing tools out there that are more refined and should be used instead.
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Thanks for reviewing Reasy, I will take your suggestions on board. Some of them seem to be at odds with the RSVP research I reviewed when designing the app (opaque background, ability to rewind). There is in fact an action key to rewind the text if you look through Reasy's settings.
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