Proofreading performance by disabled adults.

The development of Optical Character Recognition and other data input technologies is providing disabled individuals access to occupations in electronic data processing. Many of these technologies require proofreading of previously captured data for prolonged periods of time. Research using other tasks requiring sustained attention has demonstrated steep performance decrements over time by many functionally impaired populations. Previous investigations have suggested that gains in proofreading performance may be achieved by increasing the error density in the material to be proofread. Thus, the present study was designed to assess the performance of a heterogeneous group of 12 disabled persons on a computerized proofreading tasks. Errors were embedded in alphanumeric code. The subjects included individuals with a broad range of physical or psychological impairments. After extensive training, all subjects participated in a 6-hr. proofreading task. The subjects corrected 96.6% of the errors embedded in 50,000 characters. Error detections were stable across six hours of proofreading. Implications for proofreading in applied settings are discussed.