To wrap or not to wrap? A study of how long words are split when reflowed on magnified web pages

Abstract

Many low-vision users adjust the browser zoom level to make text more comfortable to read. Responsive websites attempt to fit the content within the viewport width, but several types of problems can potentially occur; long words may be wider than the viewport and thus partially hidden, they may cause large vertical space breaks, and words may be unnecessarily split or incorrectly split. This study set out to get insight into such word wrapping problems on responsive web pages. To help identify word wrapping issues, the tool HYPHERSPACE was developed. Experiments run on 91 websites suggest that hyphenation-related problems are prevalent. Excessive wrapping of words and overflowing words were the most notable problem on about 90% of the websites. One implication of this study is that web designers need to explicitly design for narrow viewports. The proposed tool can help web designers identify hyphenation problems on responsive web pages viewed with high magnification.