Sabine Sieghart

Sabina Sieghart is a designer, lecturer, and design researcher. Her PhD research investigates how typography can improve the reading of digital media for people with cognitive impairments. Currently, Easy-to-read (ETR) is used to simplify texts. Design aspects of text comprehension have only recently received attention: Sabina’s legibility study suggests that ETR users read dynamic fonts faster than the dominant static Arial, and at normal sizes. Further research revealed that genre-typical design supports the reading process and that ETR users extract meaning from macro-typographic features and design patterns. The results of a study with digital media demonstrated that ETR users are self-taught on smartphones and use standard applications. We identified visual cues as crucial, so the current study will create and test design variations that allow independent choices, such as selecting events, confirming appointments, or making requests. The results will empower not only ETR users, but all users who benefit from the improved design with its intuitive simplicity, limited text, clear hierarchical structure, and multiple task completion paths.

Sabina worked in industry for 25 years on high-profile corporate design projects and has been teaching typography and editorial design since 2003. For her doctorate she was awarded a FWO scholarship. As a DIN (German Institute for Standardization) committee member, she is substantially responsible for the formulation of the visual guidelines of the DIN SPEC 33429 Leichte Sprache (easy-to-read language).

Publications: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sabina-Sieghart-2/research
Website Sabina: https://gestaltungsinstitut.de/