Readability on the TV
A display only works if people can read it. turnda watches the numbers against your screen size and viewing distance and warns you — before it's on the wall — when the text is too small for the back of the room.
The readability check
When the smallest numbers would come out too small for the distance, the editor shows "People at the back won't be able to read this." It's a guardrail, not a wall — you're warned, never blocked.
It tells you which section and why, rather than just objecting — "On a 43 inch device from about 16 ft, the numbers in Waiting come out too small." Then the reason it found.
The two usual reasons
| Reason | What the message says |
|---|---|
| Too many rows | “It's showing 12 rows; about 7 fit.” |
| Too little width | “They've been shrunk to fit across a narrow box” — sometimes with “— this layout was built for a tall device” when the display and the device disagree about which way round they are. |
Ways to fix it
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Fix it for me | Cuts the section down to the number of rows that genuinely fit, which is what makes the rows that remain bigger. It does not shrink any text. If cutting rows is not enough, it can remove whole sections from the page — it lists those and asks you to confirm first. |
| Split over two pages | Spreads a long list across pages so each row is bigger. |
| Show {orient} layouts | Offered when the display's orientation doesn't match the screen; the button names the orientation you'd be switching to — wide or tall. |
| Keep it anyway | If you know your room and want it as-is. The warning goes; nothing about the display changes. |
"Fix it for me" is not one tap. It first shows you exactly which rows would go, headed "This takes rows off your display", and you press "Remove them" to accept. If a whole section would go, it has a tick beside it: untick it to keep that section (it loses rows instead). The box also reminds you that "Split over two pages" keeps every row.
| When | What the screen says |
|---|---|
| Before you remove rows | “Even after this the numbers will still be too small to read from the back — this device is too small, or too far away. Moving the device closer or using a bigger one is what fixes that.” |
| After you remove rows | “Rows removed — but the numbers are still too small to read from the back.” |
Screen size & distance
The check uses the screen size and how far people stand, both set on the Whole display tab. Leave distance blank and turnda estimates it from the screen size.
Two things also change what a room can read, and neither lives on this tab.
| Setting | Where | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Marking a screen as “S” | Its device settings | Shows fewer rows on that TV, compared with the screen size the display was designed for, so the ones that remain are bigger. It shows less — it does not shrink anything — which is the right trade on a small screen across a waiting room. A TV set to the same size the display was designed for shows it exactly as designed; a larger size (L, XL) shows more rows. |
| An upright TV needs a Tall layout | — | A real portrait screen is turned to suit and fills the wall properly. A portrait tablet or a phone is too narrow for a display to be read across a room at all, and gets told so: “This display needs a bigger device.” |