[HN Gopher] The Legibility of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces (2022)
___________________________________________________________________
The Legibility of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces (2022)
Author : the-mitr
Score : 70 points
Date : 2026-03-23 17:56 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (library.oapen.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (library.oapen.org)
| treetalker wrote:
| To sum up almost 160 pages:
|
| > [T]he overwhelming thrust of the available evidence is that
| there is no difference in the legibility of serif typefaces and
| sans serif typefaces either when reading from paper or when
| reading from screens. Typographers and software designers should
| feel able to make full use of both serif typefaces and sans serif
| typefaces, even if legibility is a key criterion in their choice.
| aetherspawn wrote:
| Thank you, as much as a 160 page book about fonts is probably
| thrilling, I probably won't get around to it for a while so was
| going to ask for the tl;dr
| rerdavies wrote:
| There is no compelling evidence that san-serif fonts are less
| readable than serif fonts under any circumstance, despite the
| oft-repeated lore that typographers consider serif fonts to
| be more readable than sans-serif fonts.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| Interesting! Does it touch on why people initially became so
| opinionated about serif/sans readability? And what's a
| meaningful characteristic if not serifs?
|
| I realize it's lazy to just ask, but... 160 pages...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Does it touch on why people initially became so opinionated
| about serif/sans readability?
|
| That's the default state of all questions. It doesn't need to
| be explained.
|
| Why do you think people had opinions on whether Pluto should
| be called a "planet"?
| necovek wrote:
| On both cases it is based on some evidence even if they are
| completely different (one is a question of definition,
| another of measurement and observation): for Pluto, it is a
| round lump of rock going around the Sun on it's own
| separate orbit; for serif vs non-serif, argument is that
| serifs help with line tracking for eyes depending on the
| line spacing and line length.
|
| For a meta-study finding a different result, it'd be great
| to qualify how was the previous research wrong so we learn
| something from it.
|
| I've marked as something to pick up as I am very curious.
| saghm wrote:
| > For Pluto, it is a round lump of rock going around the
| Sun on it's own separate orbit
|
| That was never the reason anyone got upset at it being
| "demoted", or else they'd be equally upset about all of
| the other ones that were never planets in the first place
| (which in fact are in fact the main argument for why it
| got reclassified). People just don't like change,
| especially for things that seem like "facts".
| Karliss wrote:
| Most of those 160 pages, is repetitive mish mash of various
| historical research (many of questionable quality) on
| typeface readability loosely grouped by certain themes retold
| in a way that makes it even less clear about their results,
| quality and whether testing conditions are useful for making
| any good conclusions. Little value in reading it all unless
| you follow references and read what the quoted research
| actually did and said. The chapters have different thematic,
| but content and conclusions are very samey -> a bunch of
| questionable research and research which was inconclusive or
| didn't observe significant overall advantage of serif vs sans
| serif.
|
| As for where it came from to me it very much feels like the
| defense of serif typefaces is largely typographers defending
| existence of their craft and people talking past each other
| with overgeneralized claims. There is definitely value in the
| art and craft of typography and I respect that. It would be
| too bland if everything used plain sans serif fonts that
| barely differ from each other, and you can definitely mess up
| typography making text hard to read when done badly. But I
| also believe that there is plenty of things based on
| traditions and "everyone knows x because that's how we have
| always done it".
|
| As for sans serif for screens the obvious reason and also
| thing that comes up multiple times is low resolution text. At
| certain resolution there are simply not enough pixels for
| serifs. The author of paper suggest that with modern high
| resolution screens this argument doesn't stand. My personal
| opinion is that it's not a big issue at sufficiently high
| text size. But even on somewhat modern 2560x1440 screen I can
| find plenty of UI elements that have only 7-8 pixels high
| labels. Not everyone is using retina displays and not
| everything is long format text. Screen resolutions have
| increased, but so have information density compared to early
| computer screens, although there is recent trend of
| simplifying UI to the point of dumbing it down and adding
| excessive padding all over the place. There are other screens
| beside computers and mobile phones, many of them not very
| high resolution even by standards of early computer screens.
| It doesn't make sense to put high resolution screen and Linux
| computer in every little thing. Problem is made worse by lack
| of antialised text sometimes due to screen, sometimes MCU
| memory and compute limitations. You are probably not going to
| have modern font rendering stack on something like black and
| white washing machine screen, gas station pump or thermostat
| The research multiple times mentioned stuff like low
| resolution, but it hardly ever quoted hard numbers in a
| meaningful way. How many pixels a typeface needs to be
| comfortably represent serif? How many arcseconds? Surely
| there must be research related to that one. This might be
| part of problem for some comparative research - can't compare
| readability of serif/sans serif if there is no serif typeface
| at those resolution. Stuff like point 10 or point 12 without
| additional details is meaningless.
|
| Some personal anecdote -> text antialising has huge effect.
| Made a sample text of serif and sans serif font and zoomed
| out to the point where lower case letters are ~6px high. I
| wouldn't expect there to be enough resolution for serif but
| you can perceive surprising amount of detail in letter
| shapes. Zoomed in on screenshot it's a blurry mess, but at
| normal zoom level the serif letters are fine. It's readable
| but wouldn't consider either of 2 comfortable. When scaled up
| to 8px both pieces were still harder to read than same height
| text in UI labels. Why is that? Why is one identical height
| sans serif text much more readable than other? Are UI labels
| better pixel aligned? Is it due to subpixel antialising?
| That's on a 90deg rotated screen, is subpixel antialising
| even working properly there?
|
| Just for fun switch OS UI font to serif. Due to font sizing
| inconsistency it ended up being 1 pixel shorter (7px) than
| same size default UI font. Can those even be considered
| serifs when they are hardly a pixel each? It felt weird,
| nowhere near as bad I expected, but still weird.
| harshreality wrote:
| Past studies suggested slight differences:
|
| - serif was claimed to lead to better horizontal tracking...
| so better for long prose _readability_
|
| - sans serif was claimed to lead to better spot-recognition
| of characters... so better for spot-character/word
| recognition and _legibility_
|
| Those effects were never very strong, and varied depending on
| the exact fonts in use (and for digital, font rendering
| characteristics).
|
| There's also probably an effect based on what you're used to.
| If most of the books you read are serif (which they would be
| for older people, since almost all printed books were serif),
| and your exposure to sans serif was largely via the internet,
| and you don't like most of what's written on the internet,
| that might sway you toward serif. Conversely, if you mostly
| read modern internet text, you might have the opposite bias.
| MarkusQ wrote:
| I can confirm the later effect; prior to the internet, my
| primary exposure to sans serif fonts were government
| documents and forms, and advertisements, neither of which
| inculcated an association with any virtues.
| rerdavies wrote:
| Perhaps you should compare government documents and forms
| from different governments. UK government forms are
| extraordinarily beautiful, and welcoming, and are easy to
| fill out. US government forms, on the other hand, seem
| almost calculated to be unfriendly, and are incredibly
| difficult to fill out even when you use supporting
| instructions. It almost seems like they have been
| deliberately designed so that they cannot be filled out
| without the assistance of a lawyer. Canadian forms seem
| pretty neutral, and practical, but are nowhere near as
| pleasant to fill out as UK forms are.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| If this were Reddit I'd buy you an award. Consider yourself
| gold-starred.
| treetalker wrote:
| Wow, my first HN award! Thank you, kind stranger! :-)
| croisillon wrote:
| we have a HN Peace Award in reserve too, should the orange
| man land on the orange website
| saghm wrote:
| Now my largest question is "which type of font does the book
| use, and how did they decide on it?"
|
| I can only hope that they split between the two.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| My personal experience, if I have to sum it up, would be, "Sans
| Serif is cleaner and easier for normal reads, such as shorter
| text, menus, and overall interfaces. Serif for longer reads where
| I need deeper focus."
| sublinear wrote:
| I find serifs distracting and "noisy" regardless of text
| length. Their modern use restricted to headings, wordmarks,
| etc. makes more sense to me.
|
| We ended up with sans-serif for body text on the web because
| it's more legibile on low-res screens. I still can't believe
| that didn't settle the argument right there and then decades
| ago. If something is easier to read on those crappy old
| screens, it's easier to read everywhere.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Not all "sans-serifs" are similar, i.e. they cannot be put in
| a single class opposed to serifs.
|
| The sans-serifs designed before WWII have evolved towards a
| maximum simplification of the letter forms, eliminating not
| only the serifs, but also the contrast between thin lines and
| thick lines and also some other details of the shapes that
| differentiate the letters. The extreme simplification was
| achieved in some of the "geometric" sans-serifs, where most
| of the letter shapes were simplified into circles and
| straight lines. The motivation for shape simplification was
| that in the beginning the sans serifs were intended for
| advertising, i.e. for printing on cheap paper with cheap
| devices, which could not reproduce fine details. More over
| such texts were intended to be readable from great distances,
| from where fine details cannot be perceived.
|
| After WWII, some sans-serifs have just reproduced with
| negligible changes some of the earlier sans-serifs, e.g.
| Helvetica and the like.
|
| Most of these sans-serifs, like Arial, are extremely bad for
| use in computers, because they have a lot of ambiguous
| letters and digits. That mattered less for English texts,
| which have high redundancy, allowing the guessing of the
| intended letters, but in computers there are a lot of
| abbreviations, keywords, identifiers, expressions and other
| kinds of character strings with low redundancy, where it may
| be difficult or impossible to recognize the intended letters
| or digits.
|
| However, there are also several kinds of very different sans-
| serifs among those designed after WWII, which attempt to
| remove the disadvantages of the classic sans-serifs.
|
| One kind is the sans-serifs that have only the goal to remove
| all ambiguities in letters, digits and other symbols, like
| most of the monospace typefaces intended for programming.
|
| Another kind, besides removing ambiguity also reintroduces
| some of the letter shapes from serifs, which have been
| simplified in the classic sans-serifs, e.g. double-storey "g"
| and "a", old-style digits, distinct shapes for the italic
| variant of a font, etc. These slightly more complex shapes
| increase the distinctness of the letters and digits, making
| them more easily recognizable. An example of such a typeface
| is FF Meta.
|
| Finally, there is another kind of sans-serifs that also
| reintroduces the contrast between thin lines and thick lines.
| Moreover, among these there are typefaces, e.g. Optima or
| Palatino Sans, which (on displays with high enough
| resolution) produce an optical effect similar to serifs,
| which is achieved not with serifs but by replacing the
| straight side edges of the lines with slightly concave edges.
|
| In my opinion these kinds of sans-serifs that are
| intermediate between classic serifs and classic sans-serifs
| are superior to both classic types, especially for computer
| use.
|
| Despite being less affected by low screen resolutions, the
| classic sans-serifs like Helvetica, Arial and many others
| should never be used for anything, because of their ambiguous
| glyph shapes.
|
| Serifs have non-ambiguous glyph shapes, but they are heavily
| distorted at low-screen resolutions or when seen from a
| distance, so they are also not recommended in many
| applications.
|
| The good choice is in most cases to use one of the sans-
| serifs with non-ambiguous glyphs, or for a more beautiful
| text one of the typefaces inspired by FF Meta or one of those
| inspired by Optima. For example, my default typeface is
| Palatino Sans.
|
| Any study about the legibility of serif and sans-serif
| typefaces that does not include a separate category for non-
| classic sans serifs is deeply flawed and its results are
| meaningless.
| tasuki wrote:
| > Not all "sans-serifs" are similar
|
| True, sure.
|
| > i.e. they cannot be put in a single class opposed to
| serifs.
|
| Not sure I understand you. Are you saying all serif
| typefaces _are similar_? There 's old style, didone, slab
| serif. These differ more than the various sans-serif
| typefaces, which are really all quite similar ;)
| adrian_b wrote:
| The differences between various kinds of serif typefaces,
| which consist mostly in which is the width ratio between
| thin lines and thick lines and between serifs and thin
| lines, and in some small details of how the lines are
| terminated are much smaller than the difference between
| classic sans-serifs and some of the post-WWII sans-
| serifs, which use different shapes for some of the
| characters.
|
| The differences between various kinds of serifs are hard
| to see on a low-resolution computer screen. The didone
| typefaces cannot be rendered correctly on most computer
| displays at body text sizes, where they are distorted by
| greatly reducing the contrast between thin lines and
| thick lines, which can be seen on printed paper.
|
| At small sizes or from a distance one cannot distinguish
| the various kinds of serif typefaces, except those with
| slab serifs, where the serifs remain conspicuous.
| However, the slab serifs frequently look rather identical
| with a classic sans serif, except that big serifs are
| attached to the glyphs, whose only advantage it that they
| may remove some of the ambiguities, which is one of the
| reasons why many typefaces for programmers use sans-serif
| shapes for most characters, but slab-serif shapes for a
| few of them. (The other reason is specific for monospace
| typefaces, where slab serifs on the narrow characters
| ensure a more uniform average color of the text, i.e. a
| less variable ratio between white areas and black areas.)
|
| On the other hand, the differences in character shapes
| between something like FF Meta or Palatino Sans or
| JetBrains Mono vs. Helvetica or Arial are extremely
| obvious and they matter a lot for legibility.
|
| I agree with you that besides classic serifs from before
| the Napoleonic wars, classic sans-serifs from before WWII
| and non-classic sans-serifs, in a legibility study one
| could include a 4th category, slab serif typefaces, which
| are distinctive enough from older serif typefaces.
|
| However slab serifs do not have any supporters who claim
| that they are good for anything else than their original
| purpose, which was for advertising, the same as for sans-
| serifs. So nothing is lost by not adding them to a
| legibility study. On the other hand, not considering non-
| classic sans-serifs is a methodological mistake, because
| they are frequently more legible than either classic
| sans-serifs or classic serifs, so omitting them is like
| organizing a competition only for known losers.
| willturman wrote:
| I recently discovered Practical Typography [1] and Typography for
| Lawyers [2] by Matthew Butterick which have changed the way I've
| approached presenting information. I would highly recommend each
| for anyone who uses text to communicate. Butterick is a Tufte for
| text.
|
| [1] https://practicaltypography.com
|
| [2] https://typographyforlawyers.com.
| unmole wrote:
| Butterick introduced me to Bitstream Charter for which I'm very
| greatful. However, I would very strongly urge people to
| disregard his recommendations for representing hyperlinks.
|
| Instead of just underlining hyperlinks, he has this demented
| nonsense:
|
| > Cross-references, denoted with small caps, are clickable.
|
| > Links to outside material are denoted with a red circle, like
| so.
|
| Hyperlinks are almost universally distinguished by underlining
| them. There is no rational reason to invent a new design
| language and expect people to learn it. And for what benefit?
| The seemingly random capitalisation of words and weird circles
| in the middle of the text makes it much more jarring than
| simple underlining.
| xamuel wrote:
| Smallcaps hyperlinks is even worse than it might initially
| sound: many ESL speakers have difficulty with text written in
| all-caps, and it totally makes sense why, if you think about
| it.
| crazygringo wrote:
| ...why? I'm thinking about it and don't have the slightest
| idea. And it's not a difficulty I ever came across with my
| students when I taught ESL.
| xamuel wrote:
| All-uppercase distorts the shapes, making them unfamiliar
| to ESL readers who have less practice. You must know that
| famous meme about how you can read English perfectly fine
| if the letters (besides first and last) of each word are
| scrambled: "Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde
| Uinervtisy..."
|
| Granted, I'm not an expert in this area. I'm actually
| just relaying what an ESL ex of mine told me. She hated
| whenever she had to read things like "Calvin and Hobbes"
| which use all-caps, for this exact reason. Come to think
| of it, she was Japanese, I wonder if it has to do with
| growing up with a logographic writing system.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Uppercase doesn't distort shapes, they're just the
| uppercase shapes. Reading in all-uppercase is a basic
| skill that you quickly learn, since it's _extremely_
| common in signs, titles, etc.
|
| I can understand that learning separate letters for
| lowercase and uppercase is something that students coming
| from other writing systems have to learn, the same way I
| had to learn both uppercase and lowercase in Greek.
|
| But it's just a year-one skill you have to learn. You
| learn it, fairly quickly, and then you're fine. It's not
| a reason to avoid using small caps. Generally speaking,
| by the time your English skills are good enough to read
| an average paragraph, text in all-uppercase has not been
| a problem for you for a _long_ time. Vocabulary is the
| thing that takes a long time to learn, not recognizing
| words in uppercase.
|
| So while I don't doubt that your ex was telling the truth
| about Calvin and Hobbes, I think that was just a personal
| annoyance of hers. It's not a widespread problem. But
| everybody winds up having their own idiosyncratic
| annoyances with foreign languages.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| It is kinda funny you recommend those books as a reaction to
| the linked book.
|
| > Nowadays, we expect such matters to be determined by
| empirical evidence, not by majority opinion. This book is
| concerned with the empirical evidence concerning the relative
| legibility of serif typefaces and sans serif typefaces
|
| Meanwhile Buttericks books are very much "some guys opinion".
| Granted, that guy has a big passion, but at the end of the day,
| his books are not grounded in empirical evidence.
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| Thanks for the-mitr for posting this.
|
| I have only scanned the contents of Part 1 (reading from paper)
| and read chapter 6 quickly, because that is the only chapter that
| considers the issue of the layout of the printed material.
|
| My interest in this question is mainly in presenting short
| paragraphs of text in paper worksheets and handouts for teaching.
| Teacher training courses tend to echo the 'sans for dyslexics'
| notion but _in addition_ suggest the use of headings with space
| before and after and the use of bullet points to break up
| material, the use of right-ragged (for LTR languages) so that
| inter-word spacing remains constant, and the use of line spacing
| chosen so that the space between the lines is a bit longer than
| the spacing between the words. The choice of typeface is seen as
| being a bit less important (as long as it is consistent within
| the handout) given that secondary school children will be
| familiar with a range of type faces.
|
| Now I'm trying to find some kind of reference for this view about
| presentation of the page. If anyone has any ideas that would be
| ace.
|
| The British Dyslexia Association provide this pdf
|
| https://www.thedyslexia-spldtrust.org.uk/media/downloads/69-...
| xamuel wrote:
| I didn't read the OP but one pet peeve of mine is the uppercase I
| vs. lowercase L in sans-serif. Especially in contexts like
| randomly-generated passwords which you have to manually copy for
| whatever reason. Does the article address this in any way? Or is
| the context limited to "real" language where that's not as much
| of an issue?
| extra88 wrote:
| That's only a problem with some sans-serif fonts. This very
| site is using a sans-serif and the capital 'I' has bars in
| either end so it's not confused with 'l'.
|
| Some sans-serif fonts do add little flourishes to some letters,
| like 'l', to further distinguish them.
| user_7832 wrote:
| > That's only a problem with some sans-serif fonts. This very
| site is using a sans-serif and the capital 'I' has bars in
| either end so it's not confused with 'l'.
|
| I'm not sure if my browser is broken or what but they
| literally look identical to me in your comment.
| keiferski wrote:
| Probably your browser. They look different to me.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| And that's the argument for serif. If you set sans serif
| the OS may pick one or another font, and that choice may
| change over time.
|
| By publishing with serif you are guaranteed there will be
| a clearer distinction.
|
| But txet is contxtual you can evn miss letres entrly yet
| be lgibl.
|
| The over a hundred page long research paper makes
| conclusion off a practical study, not encumbered by
| intuitive clues that typically make us think serif lead
| to more legibility.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Yeah, that was interesting.
|
| I replied to that comment on Kiwi (chromium), android.
| The two letters were literally identical (I even zoomed
| in).
|
| On desktop (also chromium)... the difference is obvious.
| I don't know if it's an android vs windows thing? Or
| what? But it's definitely something.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;
|
| My computer has neither Verdana nor Geneva, and my
| browser's default sans-serif is Noto Sans, which has bars
| on the upper case "I".
|
| Verdana does, too. It looks like Geneva does not
| (<http://www.identifont.com/show?1O3>), so you're probably
| using Geneva.
|
| Maybe Verdana is the default for Windows, Geneva for MacOS,
| and "other" for Linuxes.
| xamuel wrote:
| One place where the big i and small L look almost
| identical, and a pretty funny/annoying place for them to
| do so, is when you're typing a WiFi password in OSX (if
| you toggle "Show password"), at least as of MacOS
| Monterey 12.1. I also see them as almost identical in my
| browser's URL bar (Firefox 148.0.2 on aforesaid version
| of OSX) which isn't just an annoyance but might even be a
| security concern!
| mr_mitm wrote:
| Aren't those bars the serifs? So you're saying the sans-serif
| I has serifs?
|
| Hacker news uses sans-serif font and in all my browsers the I
| and l look nearly identical btw.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| I think the serifs would be embellishments at the ends of
| the bars, not the bars themselves.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serif
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| This might be a question of philosophy! I suspect that they
| were originally serifs - see inscriptions to Julius Caesar,
| say (such inscriptions being the inspiration for Trajan
| font) - but for some writers they were extended to become
| part of the letter body, akin to the bar on the top of
| capital-T.
|
| My take then is, originally they were serifs, now they are
| sometimes part of the letter form.
| boredhedgehog wrote:
| According to the CSS, this site requests the fonts Verdana or
| Geneva in order, and what you say about the capital 'I' is
| true for the former but not the latter.
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| Not for me. The font we are all seeing depends on our browser
| and whether we have the requested fonts. No bars on the sans
| serif my Firefox on Android is displaying.
| kybernetikos wrote:
| It's surprisingly rare for fonts to be careful to distinguish
| not just Il1| but also 0O 2Z "'' 5S B8. I typically set my
| system font to something that does, like Atkinson hyperlegible.
| rerdavies wrote:
| Perhaps, a well-designed random password generate should not
| use 1, l, or I. Or 0, or O. (I know mine don't).
| Terr_ wrote:
| Now I'm imagining an unrealistically-nerdy world where all
| secret entry/display widgets let you flip between different
| representations.
|
| So a form might have a choices between ASCII, Hex, Base52,
| Base64, or schemes with anti-typo check digits, etc.
| somat wrote:
| After reading an old 1870's sign painting book I really like the
| historical terms. There is roman style and egyptian style.
|
| https://dn790009.ca.archive.org/0/items/signpaintersguid00ga...
| dimaqq wrote:
| Surprisingly, some languages are better read in more specific
| fonts.
|
| Maybe it's just a matter of familiarity, but I think it's more
| than that.
|
| Reading hs.fi in their font of choice in Finnish is just fine,
| but auto-translated to English (in the same font) feels oh so
| wrong!
|
| P.S.
|
| Reading hacker news in English in HN font of choice is just fine,
| while the same sentence translated to Finnish (still in HN font)
| is mostly OK, but a little worse.
|
| My very uneducated opinion is that doubled consonants and vowels
| are very common in Finnish, and those are better read with more
| aggressive kerning, something that HN sanf serif doesn't do.
|
| Example: - lattia on laavaa tallilla - floor is lava in a garage
| coxmi wrote:
| Is there a general preference for serifs, or a local style in
| Finland for this reason?
|
| German certainly has typographic preferences that err toward
| taller x-heights and narrower forms due to heavy use of
| portmanteaus. It'd be interesting to know of other language-
| specific typographic styles too.
| tasuki wrote:
| This sounds like a nonsense comparison, no? Surely we can agree
| that different typefaces have different legibility? And yes, some
| are serif and some are sans-serif. Also context matters.
|
| Grouping "serif" and grouping "sans-serif" and comparing the
| groups' legibility is just a stupid undertaking to begin with.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| It's certainly not nonsense; it's directly addressing myths
| created by inadequate or misinterpreted studies.
| gcanyon wrote:
| A long time ago I was in a motorcycle accident, and spent a month
| in the ICU, intubated, unable to talk. My wife made a spelling
| board for me to communicate by pointing at the letters. It took
| me forever to explain that it had to be sans serif, because it
| was big plain letters. And now this is telling me it didn't
| matter!? :-)
| kerkeslager wrote:
| I believe you when you say it mattered to you, but:
|
| 1. Your experience is likely an outlier--I'm not saying your
| experience doesn't matter, I'm saying that your experience and
| experiences like yours are likely not represented significantly
| in the data.
|
| 2. Other people with outlier experiences may have different
| needs, i.e. an intervention which improves one reader's
| experience may make another reader's experience worse.
|
| I did some web accessibility work which involved interviewing a
| number of disabled clients, and the ultimate conclusion was
| that we needed to make our site colors configurable. One group
| with visual impairment needed high contrast, while a few
| clients with sensory issues were unable to use the site for
| long when high contrast was used because it was
| overstimulating. The lower-contrast modes also had issues for
| colorblind clients, although these clients were less common in
| the user pool.
|
| In typical American corporate fashion, the entire research
| results were scrapped when a donor wanted us to use color
| schemes related to our brand, despite overwhelmingly positive
| feedback from users on our accessibility configurability.
| jrm4 wrote:
| One thing goes through my mind on this; why _the hell_ is this so
| hard for people to just pick individually? We could have built
| the web and apps differently to just more-or-less work the same
| as most ebook readers. PICK WHAT YOU LIKE.
| tombert wrote:
| Honestly what seems to matter more than anything, at least to me,
| is the _size_ of the text, not so much the font face itself.
|
| I keep all my text on my computer cartoonishly large, just
| because I find it 10x easier to read if I do. Who am I trying to
| impress? Computer fonts are dynamic for a reason, I don't care if
| it looks like it's made for a blind person.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| This seems pretty intent on burying the lead.
|
| The long conclusion seems to be that all the conventional wisdom
| on the subject is not borne out by the empirical evidence. So why
| spend so much time explaining all the the conventional wisdom? I
| don't need you to tell me about 100 people's opinions just to
| tell me they're all wrong.
| qingcharles wrote:
| * burying the lede
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Personally I only care when distinguishing individual letters
| matters. So things like paths, URIs, passwords, math, & email
| addresses should be in a font with as few 'confusable' letters as
| possible. E.g. variables a & a in an equation should look
| different, I, 1, & l should look different, 0, o, and O should
| look different, etc. These are almost always easily
| distinguishable in serif typefaces, and often indistinguishable
| in sans-serif typefaces, so I tend to prefer using serif
| typefaces as a default fallback. But it's easy enough to find a
| sans-serif typeface that's also easy to read all the individual
| letters in, and sans-serif fonts tend to be a bit easier to read
| at small text sizes, so I use one of those (a customized Iosevka)
| for most things on my laptop.
| saghm wrote:
| Given the font on the cover of the book I have no choice but to
| assume that this is book is a plant by pro-sans serif interests.
| You can't fool me!
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-03-27 23:01 UTC)