Analyzing handwriting legibility through hand kinematics

Introduction: Handwriting is a complex skill that requires coordination between human motor system, sensory perception, cognitive processing, memory retrieval, and linguistic proficiency. Various aspects of hand and stylus kinematics can affect the legibility of a handwritten text. Assessing handwriting legibility is challenging due to variations in experts' cultural and academic backgrounds, which introduce subjectivity biases in evaluations. Methods: In this paper, we utilize a deep-learning model to analyze kinematic features influencing the legibility of handwriting based on temporal convolutional networks (TCN). Fifty subjects are recruited to complete a 26-word paragraph handwriting task, designed to include all possible orthographic combinations of Arabic characters, during which the hand and stylus movements are recorded. A total of 117 different spatiotemporal features are recorded, and the data collected are used to train the model. Shapley values are used to determine the important hand and stylus kinematics features toward evaluating legibility. Three experts are recruited to label the produced text into different legibility scores. Statistical analysis of the top 6 features is conducted to investigate the differences between features associated with high and low legibility scores. Results: Although the model trained on stylus kinematics features demonstrates relatively high accuracy (around 76%), where the number of legibility classes can vary between 7 and 8 depending on the expert, the addition of hand kinematics features significantly increases the model accuracy by approximately 10%. Explainability analysis revealed that pressure variability, pen slant (altitude, azimuth), and hand speed components are the most prominent for evaluating legibility across the three experts. Discussion: The model learns meaningful stylus and hand kinematics features associated with the legibility of handwriting. The hand kinematics features are important for accurate assessment of handwriting legibility. The proposed approach can be used in handwriting learning tools for personalized handwriting skill acquisition as well as for pathology detection and rehabilitation.