Reading in multimodal environments: assessing legibility and accessibility of typography for television

Television viewing is accompanied by ever more complex supporting content: as interactive TV becomes more functional, it also becomes more multimodal. Television typography is no longer limited to teletext, subtitles and captions. It provides navigation, tickers, tabulated results, info-graphics and is embedded in videos and games. At the same time, screen resolution is improving, and the size of household screens are increasing. Currently, little is known about what user needs are associated with these advances. With the use of a customisation prototype, the research explores television typography by understanding the preferences of a variety of users; people with cognitive and sensory access needs, older users and users with no stated access needs. The results from the first study showed participants preferred a larger font size than the current television standard. This preference was particularly prevalent when text was presented along with other content elements demanding attentional focus. The font type Helvetica Neue was particularly favoured by participants with access needs. The second study aims to establish a further exploration into font size for differing interactive environments. We seek to develop the prototype to test and improve the accessibility of interactive TV services.