Legibility of medicine labels : user studies on Chinese typefaces and font size for senior citizens in Hong Kong

Abstract

This study examined three common Chinese typefaces to determine the optimal font and point size to increase the legibility of medicine labels for the elderly. Three tests were applied and the outcome shows different performance results for each one of the tests. Heiti performed better in the reading test, whereas Kaiti performed well in both the character recognition and the searching a phrase tests. Songti performed adequately in all of the tests. Kaiti's resemblance to Chinese calligraphy significantly improved its performance. The findings indicate that increasing point size alone does not significantly improve legibility among the elderly.