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Re: Serif vs sans-serif

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From: Moore, Michael
Date: Jan 3, 2007 12:50PM


Terry,

This is not conclusive scientific evidence but it has been my experience
that the text smoothing functions in ZoomText seem to work better with
sans-serif fonts. I am not sure if this holds true for other screen
magnifiers.

Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Terry
Thompson
Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2007 1:31 PM
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
Subject: [WebAIM] Serif vs sans-serif

Hi All,

I know this is an old debate, but I thought I'd revisit it, and see if
anyone is aware of conclusive evidence that supports either serif or
sans-serif fonts for legibility and/or readability on the web.

There's an excellent literature review by Alex Poole that cites a large
number of studies which combined yield conflicting results. However
there's no specific mention in this article of users with visual
impairments, so I'm assuming all of the research Poole cites is based on
samples of people with "normal" vision. The Poole article is here:
http://www.alexpoole.info/academic/literaturereview.html

Is anyone aware of objective research that explores the question of
which font style works best for users with visual impairments?

Thanks!
Terry Thompson
Technology Specialist, DO-IT
University of Washington
<EMAIL REMOVED>
206/221-4168
http://www.washington.edu/doit