Designing a layout for readers who cannot use every cue

Accessible layout considers how readers distinguish colours, recognise characters and navigate a page, as well as how its appearance affects people reading under stress.

A patient-summary design case

In a Japanese patient-lay-summary project reported in 2017, a pharmaceutical writing team gathered patient information materials from hospitals and clinics, evaluated their legibility and readability and consulted design guidelines and principles. ^{1, 2} The team adopted universal design for effective communication. ² Its design considered four aspects:

1. Font and text style: Meiryo was chosen for its clear Japanese typeface and high legibility even in bold. Main text was set at 12 points, compared with the team’s usual 10.5 points for regulatory documents.
2. Line spacing: wider spacing was used to improve legibility and readability and allowed syllabic reading aids above some Kanji characters. These aids showed how to read the text and supported a language level equivalent to a Japanese junior-high-school graduate.
3. Colours: a barrier-free colour scheme was studied so that patients with colour-vision abnormalities could use the summary without difficulty. Such readers can have difficulty distinguishing red from green, purple from blue, or orange from yellow.
4. Page layout: headings and special messages such as “thank you” were made easily discernible to help readers navigate the summary. Sharing results also gave the company an opportunity to express appreciation for patients’ trial participation.

^{1, 2}

Appearance and emotional tone

The team considered the overall printed appearance important because patients might already be in stressful situations; in its view, an accompanying image could appeal to the senses, evoke positive emotions and alleviate illness-related stress. ²

The dandelion was chosen because the flower is familiar, bright and resilient, with associations of courage and the possibility of clinical trials spreading “seeds” of new opportunities. ² The image used predominantly blue and yellow to follow the project’s barrier-free colour scheme and avoided brand colours or imagery so it could be used for any of the company’s medicines. ²