ArticleOphthalmic & physiological optics : the journal of the British College of Ophthalmic Opticians (Optometrists)2026
Reading Arabic Under Simulated Low Vision: Orthographic Complexity Shapes the Effect of Contrast Polarity.
Article in Ophthalmic & physiological optics : the journal of the British College of Ophthalmic Opticians (Optometrists), 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
purposeReading is a critical visual task that depends on the resolution of fine character features, and how these features are affected by display variables under degraded viewing conditions remains an important question in clinical psychophysics. While contrast polarity effects on reading have been documented in Latin scripts, evidence from non-Latin orthographies is limited. This study investigated the effect of contrast polarity on Arabic reading performance under simulated visual impairment.
methodsReading acuity (RA), maximum reading speed (MRS) and critical print size (CPS) were assessed in 47 normally sighted adults using the Balsam Alabdulkader-Leat (BAL) reading chart. Testing was conducted under baseline and simulated visual impairment using a Bangerter filter, with both black-on-white and white-on-black charts.
resultsThe simulation significantly degraded all reading measures (MRS, p = 0.001; RA, p < 0.0001; CPS, p < 0.0001). A significant simulation × polarity interaction was found for RA (p < 0.0001), with black-on-white charts producing better visual acuity at baseline and white-on-black producing better visual acuity under simulated impairment. Chart polarity did not affect MRS (p = 0.38) or CPS (p = 0.82) significantly.
conclusionArabic relies on small, high-spatial-frequency features such as dots for letter discrimination, which appear to modulate how contrast polarity interacts with optical degradation at threshold. These findings provide preliminary evidence that may guide future studies of reading performance in Arabic-speaking patients with visual impairment.
Indexed as
Identifiers
42920077What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.