Legibility of Words Rendered Using Cleartype™

Abstract

ClearType™ is a software technique that uses sub-pixel addressing in an effort to increase the readability of digitized text. To evaluate whether ClearType™ improves the legibility of words relative to aliased text, 24 students performed a lexical decision task that involved brief exposures to 280 words and 280 non-words at different retinal eccentricities. Participants were significantly more accurate at identifying words with ClearType™ than without ClearType™. Accuracy was also higher with non-italicized text and when the text was centered around the fixation point. Response times did not significantly vary across these same variables. Thus ClearType™ offers a significant improvement in word legibility while not adding to the cost of display hardware.