A Simple Tool for Predicting the Readability of a Monitor

Background: Human factor practitioners are sometimes required to provide an immediate answer to an acquisition question, e.g., what is the readability of this monitor? Unfortunately, readability is not listed on the manufacturer's brochure. This study proposes a simple tool to quickly assess the readability of a monitor without the need of conducting a lengthy readability study. Methods: The text readability of three observers was measured for four colors (red, green, yellow, white), three brightness (.20, .25, .45), at three locations (1.62, 2.38, 3.16 meters) on a 20” color monitor. Results: The minimum error-free readable font size could be solely determined by the text/background luminance contrast. Thus luminance, not color determined readability. From these results, a MATLAB program was developed that prompts for background and text RGB values and returns the minimal error-free readable font size. Conclusions: The tool is a fairly robust and quick predictor to assess the readability of a monitor.