Cultural Accessibility: How Writing Direction and Pictorial Perspective Shape Gaze Dynamics

As visual media and digital interfaces increasingly address global audiences, understanding cross-cultural differences in visual exploration is critical for perceptual accessibility. This study investigates how culturally learned handwriting direction (right-to-left vs. left-to-right) interacts with pictorial perspective to shape gaze behavior during image viewing. Using eye-tracking data from 94 participants, we analyzed fixation-based metrics, AOI-level ambient–focal dynamics ( \(\mathcal {K}\) coefficient), and gaze transition entropy. Participants viewed 60 images spanning three perspective types (scientific, multi-point, hierarchical). Results show that perspective structure robustly modulates fixation behavior, whereas handwriting direction exerts only subtle, localized effects on gaze dynamics without altering global attention organization. Notably, age emerged as a significant predictor of ambient–focal dynamics across non-central image regions, suggesting a shift toward more distributed visual exploration with increasing age. These findings highlight the dominant role of compositional structure in guiding attention, while revealing how culturally acquired scanning habits and observer characteristics introduce secondary modulations. The results have implications for designing perceptually accessible visual layouts for culturally diverse audiences.