Legibility in Print Text for People with Impaired Vision

Abstract

Research on the level of legibility and readability of text are mainly based on subjects with normal eyesight. In Norway, about 180.000 of the population is diagnosed with a visual impairment. In our study, over 800 visually impaired subjects participated in an experiment, which is so far the largest study of legibility and readability ever conducted for this this group of observers. The observers were recruited through the Norwegian association for blind and visually impaired (Norges Blindeforbund) and the number of subjects reveals that the experiment included 4.6% of the population with visual impairments. In the experiment, the characteristics to be studied included different typefaces, serifs and sans serifs, font sizes, weighting and contrast. We can conclude that the uncontrolled home based experiment was successful regarding the volume of respondents, which resulted in significant findings. This paper gives an overview of the design choices according to experiment method and selection of legibility variables.