Reading/Web/Accessibility for reading/Community prototype testing

Our desktop and mobile sites currently have typography which makes them difficult to read comfortably. Our content takes longer to read and the information is more difficult to retain after reading when compared to other, more accessible digital text. An important factor to keep in mind when determining what is optimal for our projects is that people engage both in in-depth reading, as well as scanning of text. We would like to improve our typography to take into consideration and optimize for both of these important ways of using the projects, especially for casual readers who make up the majority of Wikipedia readers. We have reviewed the academic literature on what makes web-based content like Wikipedia as accessible and readable as possible as a starting point for improving the accessibility and readability of our text.

Goals
At first, we would like our interfaces easier to read and scan. Our research suggests that the following improvements would increase accessibility and readability:


 * 1) Making the default font size bigger (but not too big) to improve readability
 * 2) Increasing the information density (how much information appears on the screen) of articles to improve scanning
 * 3) Increasing the space between paragraphs and article sections to improve scanning
 * 4) Allowing readers (including logged-out users!) to customize the density of text

We would like to work with communities to explore possible approaches to improving the article reading experience. To that end, we have built an interactive article prototype that lets community members explore their ideal reading settings. Community members can send us their reading preferences and they will inform the future default reading settings as well as which settings we offer as customizations.

A note on the testing
We will be asking a series of questions below on your experience while reading and using Wikipedia. Since the choice of typography is most relevant while reading (as opposed to editing), we will be asking questions which focus on reading the text.

We hope that you focus on the way you, personally, read Wikipedia. We will also be asking you to imagine yourself in the shoes of a casual reader or someone completely new to Wikipedia. How do you think changes in typography would affect their experience? Do you think this experience will be different from the experience of an editor or more-involved community member?

We want to note that this prototype is not a proposal for changes. In particular, we’re not planning on providing sliders or individual settings for font size, line height, or spacing. Sending us your reading preferences will inform conversations across communities about what an ideal reading experience might look like. We will not implement the individual preferences of every participant. We will be using the results of the prototype to produce a proposal that combines these variables into simpler settings.

Instructions

 * 1) Open the prototype and start reading articles (note that editing mode will not be changing as part of this work and the editors might not work with this prototype)
 * 2) Explore various options for font size, line height, and spacing over the course of a few days
 * 3) When you’re ready, click the “share my preferences” button in the prototype.  The pre-filled form will copy over the values of last settings you were viewing as well as the page you were on.  Feel free to fill out the form as many times as you wish.