Complexity in cartographic typography creates noise and confusion for low vision audiences.  For this reason, the simplicity of sans serif type is preferred over serifs. As well, it means italics are to be avoided.

Lucida Bright roman 28pt.
Franklin Gothic Book 28pt.
Franklin Gothic Book Italic 28pt.

The glyphs of lower case ‘a’ and ‘g’ are important to producing simplicity.

 

The opentail ‘g’ is better than the spectacles ‘g’.

 

A single-story ‘a’ is simpler than the double-story ‘a’.

 

However, the ‘a’ might be mistaken for an ‘o’ due to it’s stark lack of detail.

Universe 55 28pt. / Stone Humanist Medium 28pt
Futura Book 28pt. / Universe 55 28pt.
Futura Book 28pt. / Futura Book 28pt.

Low vision users rely on the shape of words, rather than parsing individual letters.  This lead us to look for a type family with a small x-height to emphasize the ascenders and descenders and enhance the shape of words.

Legacy Sans Book 28pt.
Verdana 28pt.

Technology came into the mix.  It was prudent to look to the type already installed and available on the generating software/hardware configuration.

 

How type occupies space on the map was also a consideration.  Seeing full words on the monitor without scrolling is a significant benefit to low vision map users.  To this end, how type tracks was examined.

Verdana 28pt.
Arial 28pt.

Arial is the best option to meet all the criteria.  This sample is set in Arial 28pt.

 

What has been learned from this research can easily extend the usefulness of maps for a blind audience.  If feature labels & annotations typeset for the benefit of low vision map users are included on a tactile (braille) map, it would let a single map serve blind persons, low vision users and fully sighted map audience.  This very simple augmentation would have great benefits as it would let all these groups share their cartographic experiences with one another.

A palette of black, white and one grey is the starting point.  This high contrast, but highly restrictive palette has been applied to the library of textures designed for CanTopo.  The studies of high contrast textural forms shown here and below, are created without predeterminations of how they will be applied.  The purpose of these investigations is to find the maximum range of textures possible with this restrictive palette.

Boundary studies.  Much like with textures studies, this graphic investigation is to determine the maximum range of possible typologies with this restrictive palette.  The theory of recursive categorical insertions — formulated during the design of CanTopo — will provide the needed theoretical anchor when deciding how to apply these new boundaries.  Results will be posted as they are found.  Stay tuned!