Abstract

Aliteracy, which means being able to read, but choosing not to, is a growing problem in for America businesses. Causes include poor reading skills, time pressure, lack of concentration, and workplace distractions. High-pressure environments can turn even highly literate employees into aliterate users with short attention spans and low tolerance for the reading of text. At the same time, industry is releasing increasing amounts of technical instructions for their products. Integrated instruction is a new approach for developing work instructions for aliterate users. The technique involves merging limited text with graphics into a simple format that helps users work faster and easier. Before and after examples and case histories are presented.