Impact of digital text variables on legibility for persons with dyslexia.

Abstract

In a world with different readers with varying needs, the idea that readers might be given the option of text formatting their own text in advance seems very appealing. In this research, differences between reading speed, reading comprehension, and reading comfort were compared with the pre-set and self-set texts. The respondents read paragraphs and identified illogical words contained therein, while reading two comparable blocks of self-set and pre-set texts. The differences in the number of paragraphs read and the mistakes made in a limited timeframe were compared using a web test that was based on the Tinker's test. The results showed that the respondents encounter different difficulties while reading digital text. We statistically proved that people with dyslexia chose larger type sizes more frequently than people without dyslexia, whereas no such statistically significant trend was observed for all other variables (typeface, tracking, and leading). We did not observe any significant differences between the reading speed associated with pre-set and self-set texts; however, the reading speed was higher in the group of people without dyslexia. A significant difference was observed in reading comprehension, because reading comprehension was better in the case of self-set text used.