Gaze Switching

The act of shifting visual focus between two or more information sources, such as between captions and presentation slides in a classroom, or between a sign language interpreter and a speaker. Gaze switching is particularly costly for deaf and hard of hearing students who rely on captions: research shows they spend the majority of their time reading captions, leaving 3-4 times less time than hearing peers to process visual materials like slides and demonstrations. Each switch away from captions causes the reader to lose their place in the scrolling text, requiring additional time to recover — which in turn causes more content to be missed. Tools that help users mark their reading position (such as highlighting the last word read) can significantly reduce the cost of gaze switching and improve comprehension by up to 14.56%.