New font should make it easier for dyslexics to read and write

[aruvqan]

I am dyslexic and that font does nothing for me. Not every dyslexic has the same issues, it will work for some and not work for others.

[Spud]

My 15 year old son has a Gen-U-Wine medical diagnosis of dyslexia (I’ll save my rant for the self diagnosed for another time) and I had him read the Scientific American article with no preface.

Midway through, he stopped and said… “wait, is this written in that font?” I told him it was, and his response was “this is really cool… it is so easy to read.”

[Lasciel]

Husband is dyslexic (officially, has papers) and his verdict as to increased ease of reading: “nope - I still have to go back to the beginning of the sentences and phrases again and again.”

Overall, after reading the Scientific American article, he thinks that “It looks like normal text, but I do notice the punctuation more.” He did comment that he thought it looked a little “blurry” at the bottoms, which is something I noticed as well. It seems to be a wash for him.

It is a good idea, and it seems like a very readable font anyway. A little casual, but that isn’t a deal-breaker for me. I would be interested in combining that font concept with an actual dyslexic language-learning process (one of the variant Orton-Gillingham approaches) to see if it helped out.

[Spud]

@Lasciel

I would be interested in combining that font concept with an actual dyslexic language-learning process (one of the variant Orton-Gillingham approaches) to see if it helped out.

Count me in on this effort… my son spent three years in an Orton-Gillingham program (I have a new love for the Shriner’s) which made a world of difference in his reading ability. Anything that can help in deciphering the letters is a bonus. Sorry to hear the font didn’t seem to help your husband as much as it seemed to make sense to my son. Just goes to show that this isn’t a “one size fits all” disability.

Just curious… does your husband prefer Comic Sans Serif? My son says that is the easiest for “normal” fonts for him to read.

I’ve got a case conference for my son next week (just entering High School) to talk about any accommodations he may need (rarely uses any, but has them in place just in case), and plan to ask about these types of fonts. I’m sure it isn’t realistic to have his texts put in a different font, but if he can use it for his papers that could be helpful.

[Maastricht]

@aruvqan

I am dyslexic and that font does nothing for me. Not every dyslexic has the same issues, it will work for some and not work for others.

The interesting thing is that the other dyslexic fonts quoted here, Lexia, uses another method then this " weighted" one from my OP. Lexia uses lines that either cross, or do not quite reach, the letter.

Maybe fonts could be used to diagnose different types of dyslexia!

[Tangent]

As a teacher, I generally try to use plain, easy-to-read fonts for notes and handouts that I create, but it never occurred to me that there were fonts specifically designed to help dyslexics. Very cool! I will have to look into this further.

[aruvqan]

@Maastricht

The interesting thing is that the other dyslexic fonts quoted here, Lexia, uses another method then this " weighted" one from my OP. Lexia uses lines that either cross, or do not quite reach, the letter.

Maybe fonts could be used to diagnose different types of dyslexia!

I prefer lexia - it is very similar to comic sans.

Oddly papyrus is another font I find easy to read.

[Nava]

Does anybody know whether this font covers any letters other than the 26 English uses? There are many fonts which don’t, and that means using them for Scandinavian languages or for languages with tildes/umlauts produces horrible mixed-font results. We’ve had that problem in several international projects where the font chosen did not have those symbols; I’ve rarely seen company webpages where the French or Spanish versions were like that (think España, although Impact does have the ñ).

My current customer uses a family of fonts called Frutiger, which a dyslexic coworker mentioned was easier to read than most. It’s got variable-weight lines but, at least the way this customer’s procedures call for using it, it’s a pain in the ass to set: rather than using the usual B or I buttons, you need to switch from Frutiger-Light to Frutiger-Bold or to Frutiger-Italics.

[Baal_Houtham]

@Nava

My current customer uses a family of fonts called Frutiger, which a dyslexic coworker mentioned was easier to read than most.

One of the linked pages in this thread mentions Myriad as an effective font for dyslexics. Myriad is pretty much a Frutiger copy, and is one of the most widely used computer fonts. Adobe included it with a lot of their programs and maybe Apple too. I’m feeling too lazy to research at the moment, but it is likely to be a very convenient font to use with a very large character set.

[Baal_Houtham]

Just checked, and in Word for Mac Myriad Pro responds to keyboard commands. Bold, italic, etc.

[Nava]

So do the Frutigers (although Frutiger-Bold looks different than a bolded Frutiger-Light), I think it’s just whomever prepared the client’s procedures being a jackass. Thanks for the Myriad heads-up.

[Eggerhaus]

I’m not dyslexic with letters, but have major issues with numbers. (dysnumia?) I transcribe numbers, especially when check writing. Going from the register book to check is a chore as I have to triple check my triple checking and I always have my wife check, too. Sometimes she still finds errors. Argh.

[Maastricht]

The Huffington post did an article about this font yesterday. Apparently, the maker of the font has made it available for free for home use. Cool.

[Sailboat]

Is it just me, or does it sems to anyone else that there’s little more space between individual words in the text at the end of the video? Is that an intentional feature of the font? It feels open and airy to me. I’m not dyslexic–in fact, I’m a fast reader–but feel like the wider whitespace between words enables easier, faster reading. Perhaps it (more whitespace) might be widely adopted for general use?

[Sputnikkk]

The research I’ve been reading recently points out the idea that dyslexics can’t read because they see words in reverse or backwards or transpose letters is a myth. Neuroscientists who have studied brains through MRIs believe dyslexia is primarily a phonetic processing difficulty in linking sounds to letters. So if that is true, the font design should not make that much difference because dyslexics need help with phonics. To help dyslexics, instead of a font design someone should design systems that use sound to helps readers attach the phonemes to the letters. A computer game with letters, words, sound and images would be better. The font design may help a subset of dyslexics, who might see distortions in letters but the font design alone without sound wouldn’t help the majority who have problems processing phonemes.

…Research conducted over the past few decades demonstrates that letter reversals are hardly distinctive to dyslexia. Both backward writing and letter reversals are commonplace among children age 6 and younger, not only dyslexic children. These errors decrease over time in both groups of children, although less so among dyslexic children. In addition, most research suggests that letter reversals are only slightly more frequent, and in some studies no more frequent, among dyslexic than non-dyslexic children. Letter reversals also account for only a small minority of the errors that dyslexic children make, so they’re certainly not a defining feature of the condition. Finally, although dyslexic children are worse spellers than other children of their age, teachers who’ve worked extensively with dyslexic children can’t distinguish their spellings from those of non-dyslexic, but younger, writers. This finding supports the view that normal children make similar spelling errors to those of dyslexic children, but typically “outgrow” them.

The causes of dyslexia are controversial, although most researchers believe that dyslexics experience difficulty with processing phonemes, the smallest units of language that contain meaning. The English language, for example, contains 44 phonemes, such as the “c” in “cat” and the “o” in “four.” Because dyslexics find it difficult to parse words into their constituent phonemes, they often make mistakes when identifying words. Some researchers believe that a subset of dyslexics have visual deficits in addition to deficits in phoneme processing, but this view is not universally accepted. In any case, there’s no evidence that dyslexics literally “see” letters backward or in reverse order within words. Research on twins strongly suggests that dyslexia is partly influenced by genetic factors.

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/media/myths/myth_17.cfm

[robert_columbia]

@Farmer_Jane

I find that some Hebrew fonts are easier to read than others (and they need to be large). The differences in letters are subtle already, but if you consider what dyslexia is, it makes sense to ‘weight’ the letters at the bottom. I imagine that it is easier for younger readers as well. Remember elementary-style fonts when you were in grade school? Remember not being able to read cursive at one time in your life? I think because you probably read very well it isn’t as obvious to you.

That’s an interesting point. I wonder about the rates of dyslexia with respect to different written scripts. The Cyrillic alphabet as used in Russian doesn’t have any “reversible” letters at all - reversing a letter across a vertical axis (like as in d->b) results in a non-letter. There is one that can be matched by flipping across a horizontal axis (р->ь), but other than that, they are all distinct. Do Russian speakers have lower rates of dyslexia?