Sabina Sieghart Easy-to-read language plays an important role in the inclusion of people with cognitive impairments. Typography’s impact on effective communication for individuals with reading disabilities has long been overlooked. While discussions/recommendations on typographic best practices seem to exist, they often remain subjective and anecdotal. Objective, empirical research, particularly in digital media, remains scarce. We present typographic design recommendations for UX design and UX writing for Easy-to-read users, based on two studies investigating digital design patterns.
Our empirical studies are participatory and interdisciplinary. They open up new perspectives for typography in the field of human-computer interaction, especially for readers with low cognitive capacity. In our first study, those readers relied heavily on headings and text markup to skim content and find relevant sections via standard digital design patterns. Combinations of text and icons were useful for our participants as they could also orient themselves to the visual information. The challenge is to combine complex design with low cognitive load. These insightful results strengthen the need for typographic solutions catering the needs of the target group.
In a second study, using a participatory design approach with the cognitive impaired, we developed three typographically driven design patterns to determine which typography best facilitates event discovery, date selection, and the confirmation/purchase process for users with and without cognitive load. The interface incorporated natural user interactions, including buttons, headline-image combinations, and object titles. Our findings revealed that abundant, well-structured design enabled cognitive impaired to successfully complete multiple selection tasks. However, the confirmation/purchase process remained hindered by a complex interplay of socio-economic, user, and design factors. We also found that a design that did not work for the target group had a negative effect on the performance of the control group of non-disabled readers.