This study tried to investigate the difference of the legibility in different age groups (young and old) with same near visual acuity and to provide preliminary guidelines for the text sizes in the pesticides products based on the legibility experiments. To achieve the objective, legibility evaluation experiments were conducted to test the effects of different age(20s, 50-60s), gender, font type(thick gothic-type and fine gothic-type), thickness (plain and bold), and number of syllables(2 and 3 syllables) in the same near visual acuity(0.6). The results showed that legibility 50s was higher than 20s. And 20s are appealed higher discomfort than 50s. Considering these experimental results, it was recommended that the 14 pt or larger characters (100% readable size) should be used the important information such as toxicity, and the minimum character size was 7 pt (50% readable size) for other information.

Safety and health related information for the proper use and handling of pesticides is usually printed on the surface of the pesticide products (bottle type or bag type) in the form of texts. But, the guidelines or standards for the appropriate presentation of the texts for the pesticide products are most vague or not practical. Thus, this study aimed to provide the preliminary guidelines for the text sizes based on the legibility experiments. Total twenty subjects from two age groups (young: n=10, old: n=10, five males and five females in each group) participated in the experiment. First, subjects read the text cards presented in the distance of 50cm from the eyes of the subjects. Eight different text card sets were prepared for different font type(thick gothic-type and fine gothic-type), thickness of font(plain and bold), and number of syllables (2 and 3 syllables). When subjects read the cards, the correctness of reading (correct or wrong) was recorded and the degree of discomfort (from 1: no discomfort at all to 4: can't read at all) was also evaluated for all the text sizes. Results showed that the character size should be 4 pt or larger for the young subjects to read at least one word correctly in all the text conditions. For the old subjects to read at least one word correctly, the character size should be five pt or larder. The average of the minimum character sizes for 100% correct answer is 6.1 pt for young subjects and 10.5 pt for old subjects, respectively.