Tom Noonan of Elsevier’s User Centered Design Group Answers Your Usability Questions
Q: How do I ensure that my website is readable?
Tom Noonan
A: Though images and videos are becoming more and more prevalent, much of what users do on the Internet boils down to reading text.
To make it easy for your users to read the text on your site, pick a font that has a high degree of legibility. Recent work indicates that sans serif fonts (e.g., Verdana, Arial) tend to be more legible on computer screens.
Beyond font legibility however, there are other items to be concerned with. Pay attention to:
- Font color: Some colors are more suitable for text online than others. Blue actually works pretty well (which is fortunate, since links are still most often blue). Whatever font color you use, make sure there’s sufficient contrast between your text and the background.
- Backgrounds: Try not to use a patterned background that distracts the reader. If you must use a color background (other than white) or a pattern, test the readability of samples of text with your users.
- Font sizes: Many library patrons have poor eyesight due to aging or health factors, so use relative font sizes (rather than an absolute pixel size) for on-screen text. This way, users can change the size of the text to fit their needs. Consider offering, right on your site, controls to change font size. Today, many users don’t know where to find such controls in their browsers or even that they exist.
- Link color: Use a different color for links than for plain text. Don’t make your users move their pointers all over the screen to detect links. If you use a nonstandard color for text links, make it easy to discriminate the links from plain text.
- Consistency: Be consistent with your use of colors and font styles throughout your site.
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