UMN Study Reveals What Truly Matters for Reading Accessibility

New research from Gordon Legge, Rachel Gage, and collaborators evaluated the reading performance of two newly designed fonts developed for low-vision readers, ACT Easy Regular and Bold. The study also compared the performance of these new fonts to Courier, Gotham, and Frutiger; all of these fonts are widely used but were not originally designed with accessibility in mind.

In the article “Assessment of Newly Designed Fonts for Visual Accessibility,” published in the journal PLOS ONE, the researchers measured the impact of font design on reading metrics across a wide range of text sizes. Using the MNREAD Sentence Corpus, a widely used set of standardized sentences developed at the University of Minnesota to measure reading performance, they looked at sentences in 14 different print sizes, considering reading speed, critical print size (the smallest print required for a reader to maintain their maximum reading speed), and acuity (the smallest print size a person can read, regardless of speed).

Legge, Gage, and collaborators found that reading speed is not font-dependent, meaning that when the text was large enough, there was no statistically significant difference in maximum reading speed across the different fonts. In addition, the ACT Easy fonts designed to improve accessibility offered no real advantages in terms of reading smaller text better, nor were they found to boost reading performance overall when compared to the standard fonts. Particularly for digital designers, publishers, and accessibility advocates, these findings reinforce that mainstream fonts like Courier, Gotham, and Frutiger are both resilient and effective choices to ensure visual accessibility, performing just as well as fonts designed specifically with that purpose in mind. Instead, what matters most for reading performance is size and contrast.