Abstract
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 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.
- Ability Net. 2013. NHS Choices: Help with accessibility, Changing fonts on your computer. Retrieved from http://www.nhs.uk/accessibilityhelp/index.html.Google Scholar
- D. Adler-Grinberg and L. Stark. 1978. Eye movements, scan paths, and dyslexia. American Journal of Optometry and Physiological Optics 55, 8 (1978), 557--570.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- American Psychiatric Association. 2000. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-IV-TR. American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc., New York.Google Scholar
- Yoav Benjamini and Yosef Hochberg. 1995. Controlling the false discovery rate: A practical and powerful approach to multiple testing. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series B (Methodological) 57, 1 (1995), 289--300.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Yoav Benjamini and Daniel Yekutieli. 2001. The control of the false discovery rate in multiple testing under dependency. Annals of Statistics 29, 4 (2001), 1165--1188.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Michael L. Bernard, Barbara S. Chaparro, Melissa M. Mills, and Charles G. Halcomb. 2003. Comparing the effects of text size and format on the readability of computer-displayed times new roman and arial text. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 59, 6 (2003), 823--835. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- V. W. Berninger and B. J. Wolf. 2009. Teaching Students with Dyslexia and Dysgraphia: Lessons from Teaching and Science. Paul H Brookes Pub Co., Baltimore, MD.Google Scholar
- David Beymer, Daniel Russell, and Peter Orton. 2008. An eye tracking study of how font size and type influence online reading. In Proceedings of the 22nd British HCI Group Annual Conference on People and Computers: Culture, Creativity, Interaction - Volume 2 (BCS-HCI’08). British Computer Society, Swinton, UK, 15--18. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Carlo E. Bonferroni. 1936. Teoria statistica delle classi e calcolo delle probabilità. Pubblicazioni del Regio Istituto Superiore di Scienze Economiche e Commerciali di Firenze 8 (1936), 3--62.Google Scholar
- Dan Boyarski, Christine Neuwirth, Jodi Forlizzi, and Susan Harkness Regli. 1998. A study of fonts designed for screen display. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’98). ACM Press/Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., New York, NY, 87--94. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/274644.274658 Google Scholar
Digital Library
- J. Boynton, H. Hersh, and T. Tullis. 1995. Readability of fonts in the windows environment interactive posters. In Proceedings of ACM CHI’95 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Vol. 2. ACM, Denver, CO, 127--128. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- British Dyslexia Association. 2012. Dyslexia Style Guide. Retrieved from http://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/.Google Scholar
- Nicola Brunswick. 2010. Unimpaired reading development and dyslexia across different languages. In Reading and Dyslexia in Different Orthographies, Sine McDougall and Paul de Mornay Davies (Eds.). Psychology Press, Hove, 131--154.Google Scholar
- Georg Buscher, Ralf Biedert, Daniel Heinesch, and Andreas Dengel. 2010. Eye tracking analysis of preferred reading regions on the screen. In CHI’10 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, Atlanta, GA, 3307--3312. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- B. Caldwell, M. Cooper, L. G. Reid, and G. Vanderheiden. 2008. Web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. (2008).Google Scholar
- M. S. Carrillo, J. Alegría, P. Miranda, and Sánchez Pérez. 2011. Evaluación de la dislexia en la escuela primaria: Prevalencia en Español (evaluation of dyslexia in primary school: The prevalence in Spanish). Escritos de Psicología (Psychology Writings) 4, 2 (2011), 35--44.Google Scholar
- C. Chapman. 2011. The Most Popular Fonts Used by Designers. Retrieved from http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2011/08/the-most-popular-fonts-used-by-designers/.Google Scholar
- M. Coleman and T. L. Liau. 1975. A computer readability formula designed for machine scoring. Journal of Applied Psychology 60, 2 (1975), 283.Google Scholar
- F. Cuetos and F. Valle. 1988. Modelos de lectura y dislexias (reading models and dyslexias). Infancia y Aprendizaje (Infancy and Learning) 44 (1988), 3--19.Google Scholar
- Rudi W. De Lange, Hendry L. Esterhuizen, and Derek Beatty. 1993. Performance differences between times and helvetica in a reading task. Electronic Publishing 6, 3 (1993), 241--248.Google Scholar
- R. De Leeuw. 2010. Special Font for Dyslexia? Master's thesis. University of Twente.Google Scholar
- A. Dickinson, P. Gregor, and A. F. Newell. 2002. Ongoing investigation of the ways in which some of the problems encountered by some dyslexics can be alleviated using computer techniques. In Proceedings of ASSETS’02. ACM Press, Edinburgh, Scotland, 97--103. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- G. F. Eden, J. F. Stein, H. M. Wood, and F. B. Wood. 1994. Differences in eye movements and reading problems in dyslexic and normal children. Vision Research 34, 10 (1994), 1345--1358.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- R. D. Elterman, L. A. Abel, R. B. Daroff, L. F. Dell’Osso, and J. L. Bornstein. 1980. Eye movement patterns in dyslexic children. Journal of Learning Disabilities 13, 1 (1980), 16--21.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Mariano Fernández Enguita, Luis Mena Martínez, and Jaime Riviere Gómez. 2010. Fracaso y Abandono Escolar en España (School Failure in Spain). Obra Social, Fundación la Caixa, Barcelona, Spain.Google Scholar
- Bruce Evans. 2001. Dyslexia and Vision. Vol. 5. Wiley, New Jersey.Google Scholar
- L. Evett and D. Brown. 2005. Text formats and web design for visually impaired and dyslexic readers-clear text for all. Interacting with Computers 17 (2005), 453--472. Issue 4. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- FEDIS. 2008. Presidente de la FEDIS (Federación Española de Dislexia) asiste a las Jornadas de León. (Januray 2008). http://actualidadfedis.blogspot.com.es/.Google Scholar
- R. Flesch. 1948. A new readability yardstick. Journal of Applied Psychology 32, 3 (1948), 221.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Rosa Galván Gómez. 2010. Dislexia va en aumento (Dyslexia is increasing). El Peruano (The Peruvian, newspaper). (January 2010). page 22.Google Scholar
- N. E. Goulandris. 2003. Dyslexia in Different Languages: Cross-Linguistic Comparisons. Whurr Publishers, London.Google Scholar
- P. Gregor, A. Dickinson, A. Macaffer, and P. Andreasen. 2003. SeeWord: A personal word processing environment for dyslexic computer users. British Journal of Educational Technology 34, 3 (2003), 341--355.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Peter Gregor and A. F. Newell. 2000. An empirical investigation of ways in which some of the problems encountered by some dyslexics may be alleviated using computer techniques. In Proceedings of ASSETS’00 (ASSETS 2000). ACM Press, New York, NY, 85--91. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Robert Hillier. 2008. Sylexiad: A typeface for the adult dyslexic reader. Journal of Writing in Creative Practice 1, 3 (2008), 275--291.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Yosef Hochberg. 1988. A sharper Bonferroni procedure for multiple tests of significance. Biometrika 75, 4 (1988), 800--802.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Sture Holm. 1979. A simple sequentially rejective multiple test procedure. Scandinavian Journal of Statistics 6, 2 (1979), 65--70.Google Scholar
- Gerhard Hommel. 1988. A stagewise rejective multiple test procedure based on a modified Bonferroni test. Biometrika 75, 2 (1988), 383--386.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- B. Hornsby. 1986. Overcoming Dyslexia. Martin Dunitz, London.Google Scholar
- J. Hyönä and R. K. Olson. 1995. Eye fixation patterns among dyslexic and normal readers: Effects of word length and word frequency. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 21, 6 (1995), 1430.Google Scholar
- Albrecht Werner Inhoff and Keith Rayner. 1986. Parafoveal word processing during eye fixations in reading: Effects of word frequency. Perception & Psychophysics 40, 6 (1986), 431--439.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Interagency Commission on Learning Disabilities. 1987. Learning Disabilities: A Report to the U.S. Congress. Government Printing Office, Washington DC.Google Scholar
- International Dyslexia Association. 2011a. Definition of Dyslexia: http://interdys.org/DyslexiaDefinition.htm. (2011). Based in the initial definition of the Research Committee of the Orton Dyslexia Society, former name of the IDA, done in 1994.Google Scholar
- International Dyslexia Association. 2011b. Frequently asked questions about dyslexia. (2011). http://www.interdys.org/.Google Scholar
- J. E. Jiménez, R. Guzmán, C. Rodríguez, and C. Artiles. 2009. Prevalencia de las dificultades específicas de aprendizaje: La dislexia en español (the prevalence of specific learning difficulties: Dyslexia in Spanish). Anales de Psicología (Annals of Psychology) 25, 1 (2009), 78--85.Google Scholar
- M. A. Just and P. A. Carpenter. 1980. A theory of reading: From eye fixations to comprehension. Psychological Review 87 (1980), 329--354.Google Scholar
- G. Kanvinde, L. Rello, and R. Baeza-Yates. 2012. IDEAL: A Dyslexic-friendly e-book reader (poster). In Proceedings of ASSETS’12. ACM Press, Boulder, CO, 205--206. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- S. K. Katusic, R. C. Colligan, W. J. Barbaresi, D. J. Schaid, and S. J. Jacobsen. 2001. Incidence of reading disability in a population-based birth cohort, 1976-1982, Rochester. Mayo Clinic Proceedings 76, 11 (2001), 1081.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Donald E. Knuth. 1986. The Computer Modern Fonts, Volume E of Computers and Typesetting. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.Google Scholar
- Isla Kriss and Bruce J. W. Evans. 2005. The relationship between dyslexia and Meares-Irlen syndrome. Journal of Research in Reading 28, 3 (2005), 350--364.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- S. Kurniawan and G. Conroy. 2006. Comparing Comprehension Speed and Accuracy of Online Information in Students with and without Dyslexia. Idea Group, Hershey, PA, 257--70.Google Scholar
- Anthony Lee. 2012. Accessibility issues due to sub-pixel rendering. In Text Customization for Readability, W3C WAI RDWG Online Symposium. W3C.Google Scholar
- Lester A. Lefton, Richard J. Nagle, Gwendolyn Johnson, and Dennis F. Fisher. 1979. Eye movement dynamics of good and poor readers: Then and now. Journal of Literacy Research 11, 4 (1979), 319--328.Google Scholar
- Sharon Lockley. 2002. Dyslexia and higher education: Accessibility issues. The Higher Education Academy. (2002). https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/4172057/dyslexia-and-higher-education-accessibility-issues-sharon-lockley.Google Scholar
- G. R. Lyon. 1995. Toward a definition of Dyslexia. Annals of Dyslexia 45, 1 (1995), 3--27.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- G. R. Lyon, S. E. Shaywitz, and B. A. Shaywitz. 2003. A definition of Dyslexia. Annals of Dyslexia 53, 1 (2003), 1--14.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- F. J. Martos and J. Vila. 1990. Differences in eye movements control among dyslexic, retarded and normal readers in the Spanish population. Reading and Writing 2, 2 (1990), 175--188.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Louisa Cook Moats. 2005. The Speech Sounds of English: Phonetics, Phonology, and Phoneme Awareness (Module 2). Technical Report. Sopris West Educational Services.Google Scholar
- Sandra E. Moriarty and Edward C. Scheiner. 1984. A study of close-set text type. Journal of Applied Psychology 69, 4 (1984), 700.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- R. I. Nicolson and A. J. Fawcett. 2011. Dyslexia, dysgraphia, procedural learning and the cerebellum. Cortex 47, 1 (2011), 117--127.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Jakob Nielsen. 2006. F-shaped pattern for reading web content. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/f-shaped-pattern-reading-web-content/. (2006). Last visited April 13, 2016.Google Scholar
- Jakob Nielsen and Kara Pernice. 2010. Eye Tracking Web Usability. New Riders Pub, San Francisco, CA. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Beth A. O’Brien, J. Stephen Mansfield, and Gordon E. Legge. 2005. The effect of print size on reading speed in dyslexia. Journal of Research in Reading 28, 3 (2005), 332--349.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- R. K. Olson, R. Kliegl, and B. J. Davidson. 1983. Dyslexic and normal readers’ eye movements. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 9, 5 (1983), 816.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Donald G. Paterson and Miles A. Tinker. 1932. Studies of typographical factors influencing speed of reading. X. style of type face. Journal of Applied Psychology 16, 6 (1932), 605.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Francis J. Pirozzolo and Keith Rayner. 1978. The neural control of eye movements in acquired and developmental reading disorders. Studies in Neurolinguistics 4 (1978), 1--27.Google Scholar
- Eustace Christopher Poulton. 1965. Letter differentiation and rate of comprehension in reading. Journal of Applied Psychology 49, 5 (1965), 358.Google Scholar
- R Development Core Team. 2011. A language and environment for statistical computing (Computer Software). (2011). http://www.R-project.org.Google Scholar
- Gary E. Raney and Keith Rayner. 1995. Word frequency effects and eye movements during two readings of a text. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology 49, 2 (1995), 151.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Keith Rayner. 1986. Eye movements and the perceptual span in beginning and skilled readers. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 41, 2 (1986), 211--236.Google Scholar
- K. Rayner. 1998. Eye movements in reading and information processing: 20 years of research. Psychological Bulletin 124 (1998), 372--422.Google Scholar
- K. Rayner and S. A. Duffy. 1986. Lexical complexity and fixation times in reading: Effects of word frequency, verb complexity, and lexical ambiguity. Memory & Cognition 14, 3 (1986), 191--201.Google Scholar
- Keith Rayner and Gary E. Raney. 1996. Eye movement control in reading and visual search: Effects of word frequency. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 3, 2 (1996), 245--248.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- L. Rello. 2014. DysWebxia. A Text Accessibility Model for People with Dyslexia. Ph.D. Dissertation. Universitat Pompeu Fabra.Google Scholar
- L. Rello and R. Baeza-Yates. 2013. Good fonts for dyslexia. In Proceedings of ASSETS’13. ACM Press, Bellevue, WA, 14--21. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- L. Rello, R. Baeza-Yates, L. Dempere, and H. Saggion. 2013a. Frequent words improve readability and short words improve understandability for people with dyslexia. In Proceedings of INTERACT’13. IFIP, Cape Town, South Africa, 203--219.Google Scholar
- L. Rello, R. Baeza-Yates, H. Saggion, C. Bayarri, and S. D. J. Barbosa. 2013b. An iOS reader for people with dyslexia (demo). In Proceedings of ASSETS ’13. ACM Press, Bellevue, Washington, WA, 37--38. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- L. Rello, S. Bautista, R. Baeza-Yates, P. Gervás, R. Hervás, and H. Saggion. 2013c. One half or 50%? An eye-tracking study of number representation readability. In Proceedings of INTERACT’13. IFIP, Cape Town, South Africa, 229--245.Google Scholar
- L. Rello, G. Kanvinde, and R. Baeza-Yates. 2012. Layout guidelines for web text and a web service to improve accessibility for dyslexics. In Proceedings of W4A ’12. ACM Press, Lyon, France, 1--8. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- L. Rello, M. Pielot, and M. C. Marcos. 2015. Make it big! The effect of font size and line spacing on online readability. In Proceedings of CHI 16. ACM, San Jose, CA. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- L. Rello, M. Pielot, M. C. Marcos, and R. Carlini. 2013. Size matters (spacing not): 18 points for a dyslexic-friendly wikipedia. In Proceedings of W4A’13. ACM Press, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1--8. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- C. Romani, J. Ward, and A. Olson. 1999. Developmental surface dysgraphia: What is the underlying cognitive impairment? Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 52, 1 (1999), 97--128.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- H. Saggion, S. Štajner, S. Bott, S. Mille, L. Rello, and B. Drndarevic. 2015. Making it simplext: Implementation and evaluation of a text simplification system for Spanish. ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS) 6, 14 (2015), 1--14. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- L. Sánchez Sampedro. 2012. Impostores (Impostors). Crowdfunding, Madrid, Spain. Retrieved from http://www.impostores.es.Google Scholar
- V. F. Santana, R. Oliveira, L. D. A. Almeida, and M. Ito. 2013. Firefixia: An accessibility web browser customization toolbar for people with dyslexia. In Proceedings of W4A’13. ACM, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1--8. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Francisca Serrano and Sylvia Defior. 2008. Dyslexia speed problems in a transparent orthography. Annals of Dyslexia 58, 1 (2008), 81--95.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- A. Dawn Shaikh. 2005. The effects of line length on reading online news. Usability News 7, 2 (2005), 1--4.Google Scholar
- S. E. Shaywitz, M. D. Escobar, B. A. Shaywitz, J. M. Fletcher, and R. Makuch. 1992. Evidence that dyslexia may represent the lower tail of a normal distribution of reading ability. New England Journal of Medicine 326, 3 (1992), 145--150.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Speech Therapy Association of Catalonia. 2011. PRODISCAT: Protocol de Detecció i Actuació en la Dislèxia. Àmbit Educativo (Protocol for detection and management of dyslexia. Educational scope). Education Department of the Catalonian government, Barcelona, Spain.Google Scholar
- Joy Sykes. 2008. Dyslexia, Design and Reading: Making Print Work for College Students with Dyslexia: A Qualitative Interaction Design Study. Ph.D. Dissertation. Carnegie Mellon School of Design.Google Scholar
- Miles A. Tinker. 1963. Influence of simultaneous variation in size of type, width of line, and leading for newspaper type. Journal of Applied Psychology 47, 6 (1963), 380.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Miles Albert Tinker. 1965. Bases for Effective Reading. Vol. 1. University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis.Google Scholar
- Tobii Technology. 2005. Product description of Tobii 50 Series. (2005).Google Scholar
- V. Topac. 2012. The development of a text customization tool for existing web sites. In Text Customization for Readability Symposium. W3C, New York, USA.Google Scholar
- F. R. Vellutino, J. M. Fletcher, M. J. Snowling, and D. M. Scanlon. 2004. Specific reading disability (dyslexia): What have we learned in the past four decades? Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 45, 1 (2004), 2--40.Google Scholar
- S. Williams, E. Reiter, and L. Osman. 2003. Experiments with discourse-level choices and readability. In Proceedings of Enlg’03. ACL, Budapest, Hungary, 127134.Google Scholar
- World Health Organization. 1993. International Statistical Classification of Diseases, Injuries and Causes of Death (ICD-10) (10th ed.). World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland.Google Scholar
- M. Zorzi, C. Barbiero, A. Facoettia, I. Lonciari, M. Carrozzi, M. Montico, L. Bravar, F. George, C. Pech-Georgel, and J. Ziegler. 2012. Extra-large letter spacing improves reading in dyslexia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109 (2012), 11455--11459.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
Index Terms
The Effect of Font Type on Screen Readability by People with Dyslexia
Recommendations
Web accessibility and people with dyslexia: a survey on techniques and guidelines
W4A '12: Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web AccessibilityAlthough the dyslexia has significant occurrence in the global population, ranging from 15 to 20%, not much is known about how developers, designers, and content producers should respect differences and consider people with dyslexia in the Web. In this ...
Good fonts for dyslexia
ASSETS '13: Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and AccessibilityAround 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,...
How to present more readable text for people with dyslexia
AbstractThe presentation of a text has a significant effect on the reading speed of people with dyslexia. This paper presents a set of recommendations to customize texts on a computer screen in a more accessible way for this target group. This set is ...






Comments