Legibility of perceptually-tuned grayscale fonts

Perceptually-tuned grayscale fonts are generated from character outline descriptions by applying to them a set of modifications specifically conceived for strengthening thin character parts, obtaining well-contrasted bars and preserving important relationships between character shape parts. The present study aims at comparing the legibility of perceptually-tuned grayscale and bilevel display fonts at small and very small sizes (6, 8 and 10 pt) The study confirms the results of previous studies indicating that reading speed is to a large extent independent of the typography (bilevel or grayscale) and the font size. However, perceptually-tuned grayscale characters perform better than bilevel characters for an italic string search task in a meaningless text. Regarding the subjective preferences of the test subjects, perceptually-tuned grayscale fonts at 8 and 10 point sizes received a superior rating than bilevel fonts at the same sizes