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Evidence suggests that the most commonly used fonts tend to be equally legible at the 10-, 12-, and 14-point size. Comparing four sans serif fonts (Arial, Comic Sans MS, Tahoma, and Verdana) and four serif fonts (Courier New, Georgia, Century Schoolbook, Times New Roman) at a resolution of 1024 x 768 revealed no difference in effective reading (font accuracy/speed of reading) between font types (Bernard, Lida, Riley, Hackler, & Janzen, 2002). This finding is supported by Bernard, Mills, Frank, and McKown (2001), which did not find significant differences as well. This is not to say there is no objective differences between the fonts. In fact, there is some evidence that suggest that some serif fonts promote better comprehension than some sans serif fonts. For example, a study by Boyarski, Neuwirth, Forlizzi, and Regli (1998) found small but significantly higher levels of comprehension for the Georgia font over the sans serif font Verdana by people reading on a computer screen. However, it is really too early to draw any definitive conclusions from this. Studies need to further examine the effect of different fonts on reading comprehension. Significant differences in reading time were found in that Times New Roman and Arial were read faster than Courier New, Century Schoolbook, and Georgia. Fonts at the 10-point size were read more slowly than fonts at the 12-point size (see Figure 1). The average difference between the fastest and slowest read font was 99.4 seconds.
Older Adults are more accurate with, and prefer larger font sizes. They also prefer sans serif fonts over serif fonts. As discussed by Bernard, Liao, and Mills (2001) reading online documents (about 2 pages), older adults significantly preferred the larger, 14-point font size (see Figure 4 below). In this study, serif fonts (Georgia and Times New Roman) were compared to sans serif fonts (Arial and Verdana) at 12- and 14-points. The 14-point fonts were found to be more legible, promote faster reading, and were preferred to the 12-point fonts. Also, at the 14-point size, serif fonts tended to support faster reading (see Figure 6). Examining participants' 1st and 2nd preference choice further shows the popularity of the 14-point size (see Figure 7). The sans serif fonts were, however, generally more preferred than the serif fonts. This finding is supported by Sorg (1985), which found that older adults preferred to read Helvetica, which is a sans serif font similar to Arial, compared to Century Schoolbook, which is a serif font.
As far as reading time, a study by Youngman and Scharff (1999) found that with 0.5 inch margins, the fastest reaction times were for the shorter, 4-inch (10 cm) lengths over the 6- and 8-inch lengths (15 and 20 cm, respectively). The 4-inch lengths were also preferred over the other lengths. However with no margin widths, the 8-inch line lengths had the fastest overall reaction times. A study by Duchnicky and Kolers (1983), found that full screen lengths resulted in 28% faster reading times over lengths of 1/3 of a screen. It was also found that full and 2/3 screen lengths were read significantly faster than the 1/3 screen lengths. In a recent study by Bernard, Fernandez, and Hull (2002) that compared three links lengths (24.5, 14.5, and 8.5 cm, respectively) for both children and adults supported the finding that shorter line lengths are preferred more than full-screen line lengths. As far as the perception of reading efficiency, the results were mixed. For adults, the Full-length condition was perceived as providing the optimal amount of scrolling in comparison to the two other conditions—presumably because this condition required the least amount of scrolling. The Narrow-length condition was perceived as promoting the highest amount of concentration, while the Medium-length condition was considered to be the most optimally presented length for reading. Overall these results suggest a trade-off between faster reading times of the longer lengths and a more preferred reading arrangement of the shorter lengths. Possibly the best arrangement is somewhere between the two. More research needs to be done, however. Background textures and colors can affect the readability of text. For example, Hill and Scharff (1999) found that plain backgrounds produce faster search times than medium textured backgrounds. An important determinant, though, is the contrast between the text and the background -- the more textured the background, the greater the contrast should be between them. Moreover, textured backgrounds that are subtle at true-color (24-bit) settings, often become very noticeable at lower-color settings (i.e., 8-bit), thereby reducing the contrast between the text and the background even further. Thus, if one is to use a textured background, it is recommended to be very careful by testing it in different color settings. As for color, as long as there is sufficient contrast between the text and the background, many color combinations are possible. However, most studies have shown that dark characters on a light background are superior to light characters on a dark background (when the refresh rate is fairly high). For example, Bauer and Cavonius (1980) found that participants were 26% more accurate in reading text when they read it with dark characters on a light background. Moreover, a survey by Scharff, et al. (1996) revealed that the color combination perceived as being most readable is the traditional black text on white background. However, it is common for websites (such as this one) to have an off-white background in order to reduce the flicker and glare associated with white backgrounds. In the Scharff et al. (1996) study, other color combinations that ranked high were white on dark blue and red on yellow. However, one should be cautious in using colors such as red on yellow that are pure or 'saturated.' Saturated colors create visual fatigue and make it difficult to focus on the text. It is best to de-saturate colors by adding white or combining them with other colors. The least readable combination were green on yellow, white on fuchsia, red on green, and fuchsia on blue. Also, for all combinations, the lighter backgrounds with darker text was considered to be more readable than darker backgrounds with lighter text. Approximately 8% of males and a little less than 0.5% of females have a color deficit of some kind. In fact, one study found that around 4% of Internet users are visually impaired in some way (GVU, 1998). Thus, it is important to note that different font sizes and font color combinations can have a dramatic effect on the readability of a site. For text colors, it is important to have a good contrast difference between colors that need to be distinguished. Some color combinations generally frustrate users and make it virtually unreadable for color deficit or "colorblind" users (Nielsen, 1996). That is, for many color deficit users, red, green, brown, or purple may look the same if these colors have the same contrast. Since color deficit users cannot distinguish between a large spectrum of colors, it is therefore advised to strongly contrast the colors (make sure one color is darker than the other) between the foreground and background, as well as between other colors that need to be distinguished (see Wolfmaier, 1999, for a good description of the proper font-color mixture).
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