What is the name of your organization?
BeeLine Reader
What is the name of your solution?
BeeLine Reader
Provide a one-line summary or tagline for your solution.
A simple way to make reading on screen more inclusive and accessible
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Menlo Park, CA
In what country is your solution team headquartered?
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What type of organization is your solution team?
For-Profit
Film your elevator pitch.
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What specific problem are you solving?
Literacy experts estimate that 800 million people around the world are functionally illiterate. Many millions of these people are affected by disabilities like dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, or vision impairment, which together affect over 25 percent of the population.
What is your solution?
BeeLine Reader developed a new way to display text that makes reading on screen more efficient and more accessible, with technology that is simple, intuitive, and easy for anyone to use. Instead of displaying text in black, BeeLine Reader uses a subtle color gradient, which helps pull the reader's eyes through the text. The color gradient wraps from the end of one line to the beginning of the next, improving visual tracking and making the reading process easier for people of all reading abilities. The technology can be implemented on any type of device, from feature phones to fully-loaded desktops, and can be implemented using widely-compatible technologies such as javascript, which allows us to support web browsers as far back as Internet Explorer. BeeLine Reader also works with PDF documents and ebooks so that our users can use our technology to read almost anything.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
Although our technology is used by even highly skilled readers (we have a site license with Stanford, among other elite schools), the most important user base for BeeLine Reader is people with reading-related disabilities.
Even in the disability world, this group is often overlooked because of their "invisible disability." Most of these individuals have one or more of: dyslexia, ADHD, autism, and vision impairments.
We correspond daily with people in these communities to ensure that we understand their challenges, listen to their feedback, and consider the ways that we can better serve them. We also work with parents of students with disabilities, special education teachers, medical doctors, optometrists, and other experts who can help us as we serve these communities.
Thanks to input from these communities we have introduced new features, simplified our onboarding process, and learned of new communities (e.g., survivors of traumatic brain injuries, who often have visual tracking issues when reading).
Our technology offers transformative benefits for people in these communities. Many of these people have struggled to read for years or even decades. Our simple tweak allows them to read like never before, and with zero learning curve.
