Kevin Larson

About

Kevin Larson is a Principal Researcher on Microsoft’s Advanced Reading Technologies team (opens in new tab).

Kevin’s research focuses on reading, how to make it easier and more comfortable to read from computer screens, and tools to make it easier for everyone to learn to read, including people with dyslexia. Kevin holds a PhD in cognitive psychology from the University of Texas at Austin where he studied word recognition and reading acquisition.

Kevin works closely with the teams that make new fonts like Sitka (opens in new tab), new font technologies like Sound It Out (opens in new tab) and Prosody (opens in new tab), and the reading programs Immersive Reader and Reading Progress.

Sound It Out (opens in new tab) is a feature that has been shown to improve reading for people with dyslexia by disambiguating English vowels. English uses five vowel letters to represent nineteen sounds, which makes it more difficult to read. Unique icons, like a pig for the /ih/ sound, perfectly represent each English sound.

Prosody (opens in new tab) is a feature that helps readers understand the expression in the text. Helping readers hear the expression in text results in improved reading comprehension.

Immersive Reader is a reading program designed to reduce distraction while providing tools to improve reading for everyone including people with dyslexia.
Lauren Pittman on Immersive Reader (opens in new tab)
Andrzej reads better with Immersive Readers’ increased spacing (opens in new tab)

Reading Progress is a tool for students and teachers to practice oral reading fluency.
Manitou Park Elementary on Reading Progress (opens in new tab)