A Theory of Visual Attention Based Assessment of Font Style: How Important is x-height for Font Legibility? At the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR) annual conference, Drs. Bart Cooreman and Sofie Beier presented their work to understand the impact of different font characteristics on reading letters. In three experiments, they looked…
New Research Published from Across the Readability Community The proceedings of the 2024 Vision Sciences Society (VSS) conference include four posters presented by members of the cross-disciplinary readability research community. Their groundbreaking work examines how different typefaces and typographic features influence reading performance. These presentations add to the growing evidence that typography plays a…
Studying Format Readability in Children Dr. Stephanie Day and team conducted a study that provides important insights into how text format readability changes (in this case, font and letter spacing variations) impact reading performance in readers in grades 3–5. The results showed that changes to text format significantly improved reading speed at both the…
Optimized Text Formats Increase Student Performance in Mathematics Would you solve mathematical problems more efficiently or experience them as less difficult if the problems were presented in your best reading format? A new paper says yes. Recent research on how typography impacts mathematics was presented at the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society annual conference.…
Readability Research From The Applied Perception and Psychophysics Laboratory University of Toronto Mississauga The Applied Perception and Psychophysics Laboratory at the University of Toronto Mississauga focuses on questions at the intersection of vision science and real-world problems and takes a use-inspired approach to research. This approach means that the lab looks to real-world…
Text Format Impacts Reading Comprehension Personalizing text formats can improve reading outcomes for school-aged children. Reading comprehension, the ability to successfully extract information from text, is a critical skill, yet many students struggle to learn to read across many countries. In the United States, only 35% of 4th graders and 34% of 8th graders…
Engineering Reading Themes for Diverse Audiences Prior research has shown that personalization of text formats can significantly improve reading performance, creating better results in speed, accuracy, and comprehension. As these benefits are better understood, digital reading application providers are working to offer readers custom control over text settings, but adjusting the settings can be…
New Google Study Evaluates the Impact of Adjusting Font Grade on Readability in Light and Dark Polarities We want to encourage people to read in ways that will help them to effectively engage with the digital environment. Palmén, et al. Readers read for different purposes, such as checking the time, enjoying a novel,…
Evaluating Inclusively Designed Rulers for Readers With Dyslexia and Without At the leading international conference on Human-Computer Interaction ACM CHI’23, first-author Aleena Niklaus presented Digital Reading Rulers: Evaluating Inclusively Designed Rulers for Readers With Dyslexia and Without. Physical reading rulers have been used with books for years as a readability aid. The research team…
Space for Readability: Effects on Reading Speed from Individuated Character and Word Spacing Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting December 2022 The Vision Sciences Society has again highlighted readability work. A peer-reviewed abstract was presented at the VSS conference and published in the 2022 conference proceedings. The research studies the influence of character and word…