Importantly, the Proof of Concept identified demand beyond the initial trial. Some 96% of participating families expressed interest in accessing more subtitled stories, and 78% indicated they would use them weekly or several times a week if additional content were available. Families also rated their likelihood of recommending home-language stories to other families at a mean of 8.3 out of 10.

There were also lessons for future development. Experiences differed between languages, with Mandarin-speaking families identifying subtitle readability as a key barrier. Several parents could read the Chinese-language subtitles fluently themselves, but noted that their children – particularly those in Prep to Year 2 – had not yet learned enough characters to read along independently.

This meant that, for younger children, the subtitles were often more useful for parents’ own understanding of the story in shared reading experiences than for the children’s independent comprehension – a pattern that eased somewhat from Year 3, as students’ reading ability in their home language began to catch up. A similar age-related pattern was echoed by a teacher working with Hindi-speaking students, who noted that “the more capable students were typically more engaged and able to summarise the text and the less able were also distracted and unable to recall main elements of the text” (Teacher, Year 1). Even so, 86% of Mandarin-speaking families (n=14) still agreed that watching stories in their home language strengthened their family’s connection to culture and language – the barrier sat in children’s independent reading, not in the value of the experience itself. These findings provide StoryBox Hub with practical evidence to inform future product and content decisions, including families’ own suggestion of simultaneous bilingual subtitles or home-language audio narration as a way to bridge this gap for children not yet reading independently in their home language.

Ultimately, the Proof of Concept demonstrated that multilingual access is about more than translation – it’s about enhanced reading experiences that lead to more shared reading moments.

When families can experience stories in the languages they use at home, technology can help turn reading into a shared experience across children, parents and grandparents, while strengthening the connection between home, culture and learning.