Community knowledge sharing: an Internet application to support communications across literacy levels

This paper presents Community Knowledge Sharing (CKS), an asynchronous discussion system designed for use in the developing world. CKS supports community development by allowing communities to interact, share and learn from each other. Recognizing that large segments of the population in rural communities have low levels of literacy, CKS implements a multi-literate design in which the system can be customized based on the abilities and preferences of the user. An evaluation of CKS, conducted in a rural agricultural community in the Dominican Republic, found that low literate users prefer fully iconic interfaces. Future systems designed for use by people with a range of literacy skills must ensure that iconic interfaces provide users with the audio and visual cues they need to work effectively.