Visibility study on Japanese character with voiced sound marks for children with low vision and development of fonts for low vision children

2012 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 22531079
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Special needs education
• Research Institution: National Institute of Special Needs Education
• Principal Investigator: TANAKA Yoshihiro 独立行政法人国立特別支援教育総合研究所, 教育支援部, 総括研究員 (70392933)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): SAWADA Mayumi 独立行政法人国立特別支援教育総合研究所, 教育研修・事業部, 総括研究員 (50321592)
• Project Period (FY): 2010 – 2012
• Keywords: 弱視 / 濁音・半濁音 / 視認性 / フォント

Research Abstract

In this study, we discovered that minimum readable font size of low vision children is about 3 points larger than that of sighted people in the comparative experiments of reading fonts. We developed fonts for low vision children based on the results of the experiments. The fonts we have developed are formulated in the characteristics of those voiced sound marks being about 4 times as large as normal fonts. In order to assess the availability of developed fonts for low vision children, we conducted the comparative experiment using developed fornts and normal fonts. In the experiments, we checked the readability of developed fonts, and we found that percentage of questions about reading words printed with developed fornts are much inclined in comparison with the results of initial experiment. We suppose this makes it clear that developed fonts are useful for low vision children.