Translations:Reading/Web/Accessibility for reading/Repository/Readability research report/29/en

Much like the Wikipedia readers we studied, eye tracking studies have found that general readers on the web tend to scan text rather than reading it in a linear way. Even if they want to go through an article in detail, they scan past certain elements and come back after reading other things. When researchers track a reader's eye movements down a large page of text while they are trying to skim an article quickly, they studies have observed a pattern called a "spotted pattern". When a reader is reading in a spotted scanning way, their eyes sweep through large sections of text looking for bolded words, dates, links, and other things that stand out in an otherwise undifferentiated body of text.