Readability
Readability is a measure of the accessibility (in a general sense) of a piece of writing and/or associated page layout, indicating how effectively it will reach a given reading audience.
Readability is thus a judgement of how easy a text is to understand for a given population of readers. Best practise on readability in terms of usability include the following:
- Contrast - text that must be read should have high contrast. Favour black text on white or pale yellow backgrounds. Avoid grey backgrounds.
- Size - use font sizes that are large enough to be readable on standard monitors. Favour particularly large characters for the actual data you intend to display, as opposed to labels and instructions. For example, the label, "Last Name," can afford to be somewhat small. Habitual users will learn that that two-word grey blob says "Last Name." Even new users, based on the context of the form on which it appears, will have a pretty good guess that it says "Last Name." The actual last name entered/displayed, however, must be clearly readable. This becomes even more important for numbers. Human languages are highly redundant, enabling people to "heal" garbled messages. Numbers, however, unless they follow a very strict protocol, have no redundancy, so people need the ability to examine and comprehend every single character.
- Accessibility - pay particular attention to the needs of older people. Presbyopia, the condition of hardened, less flexible lenses, coupled with reduced light transmission into the eye, affects most people over age 45. Do not trust your (or anyone else's) young eyes to make size and contrast decisions.
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