OBJECTIVES This study examined concurrent validity of the Evaluation Tool of Children's Handwriting-Cursive (ETCH-C) by comparing ETCH-C total legibility percentage scores with handwriting grades from teachers. The study also identified the legibility percentage score discriminating between satisfactory and unsatisfactory handwriting. METHOD The participants were 101 fourth graders who comple...

Millions of people have low vision, a disability condition caused by uncorrectable or partially correctable disorders of the eye. The primary goal of low vision rehabilitation is increasing access to printed material. This paper describes how adjustable typography, a computer graphic approach to enhancing text accessibility, can play a role in this process, by allowing visually-impaired users t...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of kinesthetic training' on handwriting performance in first-grade students 6 to 7 years of age who had kinesthetic deficits and handwriting difficulties. METHOD With a randomized-blinded three group research design, 45 children were assigned to either a kinesthetic training group, a handwriting practice group, or a no treatmen...

We examined the effects of a cotaught handwriting and writing program on first-grade students grouped by low, average, and high baseline legibility. The program's aim was to increase legibility, handwriting speed, writing fluency, and written expression in students with diverse learning needs. Thirty-six first-grade students in two classrooms participated in a 12-wk handwriting and writing prog...

OBJECTIVE Pencil grasps other than the dynamic tripod may be functional for handwriting. This study examined the impact of grasp on handwriting speed and legibility. METHOD We videotaped 120 typically developing fourth-grade students while they performed a writing task. We categorized the grasps they used and evaluated their writing for speed and legibility using a handwriting assessment. Usi...

Original scientific paper A different number of white ink layers printed with the inkjet technology can influence the legibility of prints. Therefore, we tested how to achieve best legibility of printed text and labelling information, considering the changes in colorimetric and typographic properties. The prints were made with an inkjet printer and three different numbers of white ink layers we...

Nighttime highway sign legibility distance was evaluated as drivers maintained speeds of 5 versus 60 MPH. Effective legibility distance fell by approximately 30% when driving at high speed (114.9 versus 81.2 m at 5 and 60 MPH, respectively; F(1,9) = 48.6, p < 0.001). This finding suggests that past research, usually conducted under static viewing conditions (i.e., less than 5 MPH), probably ove...

Three experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of adults aging upon the legibility of simulated symbol highway signs. Each experiment employed a different set of lighting conditions: (1) daytime luminance, (2) nighttime luminance, and (3) nighttime luminance with glare. Young (ages 18-25) and middle-aged (ages 40-55) observers demonstrated small reductions in legibility when lumina...

Using lower-case fonts varying only in serif size (0%, 5%, and 10% cap height), we assessed legibility using size thresholds and reading speed. Five percentage serif fonts were slightly more legible than sans serif, but the average inter-letter spacing increase that serifs themselves impose, predicts greater enhancement than we observed. RSVP and continuous reading speeds showed no effect of se...

This report describes the findings of a study in symbol legibility which investigated the reading time and errors for common five-letter words when they are projected by a solid stroke and when they are shown by a broken stroke. The latter was produced on a 945-line TV monitor at 10, 7, and 5 active lines per symbol height. This study is similar to an earlier report on the readability of common...