THERIF: Themes for Readability from Iterative Feedback

Research Highlight | THERIF: Themes for Readability from Iterative Feedback

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…

Digital Reading Rulers Evaluating Inclusively Designed Rulers for Readers With Dyslexia and Without, CHI'23

Research Highlight: Digital Reading Rulers

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

Space for Readability: Effects on Reading Speed from Individuated Character and Word Spacing

Research Highlight: 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…

28 Experts join forces for readability research

Research Highlight: “Readability Research: An Interdisciplinary Approach”

New Readability Research Paper Aims to Accelerate Best Practices and Methodologies   Readability Research: An Interdisciplinary Approach published in Foundations and Trends in Human-Computer Interaction – December 12, 2022   Paper Introduction “From the moment we wake up to the moment we end our day, we use interfaces built out of the written word. Textual…

Fonts of Wider Letter Shapes Improve Recognition

Research Highlight: Fonts of Wider Letter Shapes Improve Letter Recognition

Small Font Changes can Make Significant Differences in Successfully Reading Digital Text   As more and more reading moves from print to digital surfaces, it is important to challenge typographic traditions established when most reading involved printed materials. There is little research about the impact of character width on letter recognition. Digital text is generally…

Society for the Scientific Study of Reading - Readability Posters

SSSR | Research Results: Improved Student Reading Speed and Comprehension

Personalized Reading Formats Studied in K-8 Students   Updated: August 30, 2022 Cross-disciplinary research teams delivered posters summarizing their readability research at the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR) annual meeting. The prestigious reading conference reports on all aspects of reading and its related areas, including issues related to word recognition, comprehension, writing,…

Personalized Font Recommendations: Combining ML and Typographic Guidelines to Optimize Readability

Personalized Font Recommendations with Machine Learning

Vision Scientists, Data Scientists, and Typographers Collaborate on New Readability Solutions   At the proceedings of DIS’22, the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS), Tianyuan Cai and his colleagues presented their latest research, Personalized Font Recommendations: Combining ML and Typographic Guidelines to Optimize Readability. The study is a collaboration between vision scientists, data…

Towards Individuated Reading Experiences: Different Fonts Increase Reading Speed for Different Individuals Wallace et al., 2022 - ACM TOCHI

Towards Individuated Reading Experiences

Individuated Reading Experiences Increase Reading Speed without Affecting Comprehension   Readability Matters obtained a pre-print of a forthcoming ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) paper. Shaun Wallace and his colleagues report that participants’ reading speeds (measured in words per minute – WPM) increased by 35% when comparing their fastest and slowest fonts without affecting reading…