15 the Effect of Font Type on Screen Readability by People with Dyslexia
The Effect of Font Type on Screen Readability by People with Dyslexia LUZ RELLO and RICARDO BAEZA-YATES, Web Research Group, DTIC, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain Around 10% of the people have dyslexia, a neurological disability that impairs a person’s ability to read and write. There is evidence that the presentation of the text has a significant effect on a text’s accessibility for people with dyslexia. However, to the best of our knowledge, there are no experiments that objectively 15 measure the impact of the typeface (font) on screen reading performance. In this article, we present the first experiment that uses eye-tracking to measure the effect of typeface on reading speed. Using a mixed between-within subject design, 97 subjects (48 with dyslexia) read 12 texts with 12 different fonts. Font types have an impact on readability for people with and without dyslexia. For the tested fonts, sans serif , monospaced, and roman font styles significantly improved the reading performance over serif , proportional, and italic fonts. On the basis of our results, we recommend a set of more accessible fonts for people with and without dyslexia. Categories and Subject Descriptors: H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: User Interfaces— Screen design, style guides; K.4.2 [Computers and Society]: Social Issues—Assistive technologies for per- sons with disabilities General Terms: Design, Experimentation, Human Factors Additional Key Words and Phrases: Dyslexia, learning disability, best practices, web accessibility, typeface, font, readability, legibility, eye-tracking ACM Reference Format: Luz Rello and Ricardo Baeza-Yates. 2016. The effect of font type on screen readability by people with Dyslexia.
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