
Dyslexie: A typeface for dyslexics - pvilchez
http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2011/06/30/dyslexie-a-typeface-for-dyslexics/
======
hammmatt
This is very anecdotal naturally. But I am a dyslexic and it was really a
struggle for me as a little kid. I don't like reading very much because it is
a frustrating endeavor. I like information, I like thinking, and I guess I
have favored smaller condensed pieces when reading. _Perhaps why I love this
website_

I can attest though that upon seeing the paragraph written at the end of the
video that the text was much easier to read. I was really quite blown away
with it. I'm all for this, and really hope it can get spread around.

I don't think you can make someone who is not a reader become one. But I think
like anyone who can't do something by a limitation when it is removed you have
a new found respect for what you didn't have. It may not be a big market, but
trust me there is a market here.

I'm going to download all of these on every part of my system that I can
tonight.

~~~
baddox
I don't understand why/how some of the changes they've made would help
dyslexics _immediately_. Perhaps you could explain.

It seems like most of the changes were arbitrary (e.g. rotation, making the
lower parts bolder) and designed to make two otherwise similar characters
distinct. Wouldn't that require a learning period, to figure out which
characters were changed in which ways? If you don't know (reflexively from
memory) whether they rotated the `i` or the `j`, the rotation won't help
anything.

~~~
eavc
In the video, they explain it as embracing the conception of the letters as
being 3d objects. The added weight in the lower parts would intuitively anchor
that letter in that orientation. Perhaps a 'j' should be tilted due to its
asymmetry.

As for my $.02, I think the mix-ups often occur in real-time due to proximity.
Making the symbols distinct would perhaps lessen the likelihood that the brain
will try to identify those conceptual objects as a unity when they are near
one another.

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wccrawford
In the video is says that dyslexic readers made fewer errors when reading the
text than normal readers, and they think that means that it helps dyslexics
read easier.

What kind of experiment is that? If you want to know if it helps dyslexics,
you don't change out the dyslexics... You change out the font!

It sounds like they either don't understand experimentation at all, or they
borrowed someone else's results and tried to read things into them.

Edit: As noted below, they apparently actually did test whether dyslexics
could read that font better or not. They just also happened to test normal
people as well, to see if they were affected. The video confuses this.

~~~
rgjvanderdussen
According to the master's thesis there are no significant main effects:
[http://www.ilo.gw.utwente.nl/ilo/attachments/032_Masterthesi...](http://www.ilo.gw.utwente.nl/ilo/attachments/032_Masterthesis_Leeuw.pdf)

I could imagine that this works well for specific kinds of dyslexia.

~~~
lloeki
The approach is weird because it focuses on shapes:

 _"many of the letters look similar – such as v/w, i/j and m/n – thus people
with dyslexia often confuse these letters"_

Dyslexic people usually don't confuse letters M and N, they confuse M and P.
Notice how they don't relate in any sort of way. This shows how much of a
brainfuck (no offense) it is to live with dyslexia, and how hard it is for
non-dyslexic to understand the disability.

To make an object-oriented parallel, dyslexic people know very well the
difference between two classes (concepts), but when seeing or creating
instances (realisation), they can't seem to make heads or tails of which one
belongs to which class. So the instances m of class M and p of class P will
get processed as some mashup M/P. The only way out is to work around the
mashup by tying M class and P class each to another unrelated concept, but
related to the instances.

So as an example, the letter 'm' is linked to the word 'marmalade' (which is
an instance of the concept of 'Marmalade') and p to the word peanut (itself an
instance of Peanut). 'Marmalade' and 'Peanut' being hopefully[0] unrelated,
the person can find a solution by linking concepts (not instances) 'M' to
'Marmalade' and 'P' to 'Peanut', so that when the person tries to process the
word 'motor', instead of being faced with a dreadful (M/P).O.T.O.R. they will
be able work around the issue by thinking (Marmalade).O.T.O.R.

I took the 'm' shape which is present in both 'marmalade' and 'motor' as a
link vector, but really any vector will do, and people use an extremely
diverse array of vectors and associations. One can end up linking 'm' to
'Green' just because for some reason seeing a 'm' makes him thing of the color
(hence concept) 'Green' whereas 'p' will be tied to 'Red'. Being able to break
the M/P mashup is the key, and whatever association will do, so it just
happens that M/P+Green == M for someone.

[0] I said 'hopefully', because concepts of any level can result in a mashup.
If for some reason the mashup Marmalade/Peanut exists, it will be of no help
to map m to Marmalade.

~~~
mitcheme
Could I have a link to the M/P thing? I googled it but all I could find was
stuff about M[agnocellular] and P[arvocellular] processing in dyslexics.

~~~
lloeki
My wife is dyslexic. She used to have a hard time with phonemes and syllables
containing M/P, T/D, F/V, P/B. Please note that she's a native French speaker,
and language type (opaque vs transparent) seems to have an influence on
dyslexia. She managed to reach university by herself, but was hitting more and
more road blocks especially as she considered a Law cursus. She reached a
speech&language therapist (" _orthophoniste_ ", don't know how developed it is
over there, but it's quite a well-known field here in France) which trained
her at working around her difficulties. She's now on a successful path towards
a masters degree in Law, and you probably know how much words are of much
importance in that field, so I guess it's a total win.

SLTs actually use those associations to quickly and accurately diagnose
dyslexia, so sorry, I have no reference to give to you. It may look like
anecdotal evidence, but I get that straight from the horse's mouth.

~~~
mitcheme
OK, thank you. My high school math teacher was dyslexic but as he told it, it
was an issue with letter rotation, flipping, and swapping, which is what I've
heard from other sources (including local SLTs). Maybe that's something that
depends on native language or the type of dyslexia you have.

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JeanPierre
Interestingly, the much hated font Comic Sans is another good font for
dyslexics because the letters look more different from each other than e.g.
Times New Roman. Therefore, if you're making invitations to your son's 7-year
old birthday, Comic Sans is a great font for the text.

~~~
ams6110
The dyslexie font did remind me of Comic Sans right away.

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giberson
A few questions for dyslexics:

1) Is it consistent? Do you have have trouble with the same letters/letter
pairings? Or do different words tend to have different effects?

2) Normal readers tend to read the "word" and not the individual letters.
Do/Can dyslexics do the same? As an example, if for instance dyslexics
commonly were to transpose the "o" and "u" combination "ou" to "uo" I'm
wondering if dyslexics read the jumbled "yuo" immediately as "you" or, does
dyslexia prevent you from even recognizing the pattern and you have to
laboriously read "y" "u" "o", transpose "o" and "u" and recognize "you".

The reason I ask is because I'm curious if such a typeface might actually be
hurtful to dyslexic readers. While the typeface is easier to read for
dyslexics I wonder if using such a type face for initial reading education
would have a side effect. When the reader switches to non dyslexic type faces,
%99.99 the rest of all digital type, they will have diminished capacity for
reading those texts (more so than having learned to cope with the frequent
errors of those type faces)?

In other words, might the best solution to be educating dyslexics by
recognizing they may see different or multiple letter patterns for certain
words and simply train them to recognize each possible version of those letter
patterns?

IE. Here's a vocabulary sheet for Johny, a non dyslexic child:

    
    
        "mouse" - a small four legged mammal.
        "house" - a building you live in.
    

The same vocabulary sheet for Mikey, a dyslexic child.

    
    
        "mouse", "muose" - a small four legged mammal.
        "house", "huose" - a building you live in.
    

Granted I'm very ignorant of this disorder and I may be over simplifying it.
But my ultimate question and I don't mean it to sound cold or callous, but
might it be better to focus efforts on teaching dyslexics to deal with it?

~~~
rickmode
Question 1

I find the font easier to read, but I became and avid reader after getting
diagnosed and given private reading lessons in the 2nd grade (circa 1977). I
suspect I retrained by brain with constant reading from that point onward.

By contrast, my sister who is 11 years older didn't get diagnosed young, and
still struggles to read. Though she can read these days, she has a strong
preference for audiobooks. When studying, she listens at 3x to 4x speed. Crazy
fast. For personal reading she uses 1x to 2x.

Today here's what I can see (and since this is self reported, take it with a
grain of salt):

a. I'm a slow reader compared to other avid readers. I read _much_ faster than
people that don't read often; I read about half as fast (or less) as my
college friends that are avid readers.

b. For sentences or paragraphs displayed briefly (as happens in movies or TV
shows), I get so worried about finishing the sentence, I often can't finish in
the time the wording is shown. (So in this case I'm guessing I'm much slower
than average.) I'd guess this is "test anxiety" [1]. Taking tests as a kid was
torture. Example, I was relaxed taking my SATs and got 1250 (did it in one
shot), for my ACTs, I was distracted and buzzing around in my head, and scored
below the 50 percentile.

c. Answer "right / left" question is not automatic. I always have to think. I
imagine pointing from my shoulder through my arm in the direction I'm
thinking. (Perhaps every one does this.) I just know there's a small mental
pause.

d. I struggle with unfamiliar but initial concepts or names. For example, when
learning object-oriented programming, it took a bit for me to grok class vs
object. Usually this forces a deep understanding, which in the end is great,
but can be a slow learning process.

Question 2

I certainly read by whole words today. The problem (major difference) with
dyslexics is the process of learning to read. When learning to read, dyslexics
read in "chunks" and by word shape - basically seeing the word as whole, not
the individual letters. I recall the uneven scanning. I also recall thinking
"who the heck are these other kids learning this?" because I could see no
rhyme or reason. AFAIK, kids normally clearly see the letters making up the
words. I needed intense phonics training to "get" this.

Education (phonics training) is absolutely critical. Your "mouse"/"house"
examples are exactly the kinds of intense flashcard things I went through. Day
after day, card after card.

The Dyslexie font should be complimentary. I seriously doubt it would be a
substitute. Many fonts explicitly emphasis readability - Dyslexie attempts to
increase legibility for a non-standard brain type.

I think the font rocks, and I've love to get my hands on the font to live with
it for a while.

[1] <https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Test_anxiety>

~~~
jerf
"When learning to read, dyslexics read in "chunks" and by word shape -
basically seeing the word as whole, not the individual letters. I recall the
uneven scanning."

I've wondered if dyslexia could be mitigated/cured by modifying a text reader
to pulse the letters in sequence, thus giving the brain something to latch on
to. Perhaps tie it in with an eye tracker. Gradually, you could reduce the
strength of the pulse until they are reading normally, perhaps maybe. This
idea was based on a theory that I heard that dyslexia may fundamentally stem
from a timing issue in the brain; well, perhaps we could train that directly.

I have nobody to try this on, though, so I haven't done anything with it.

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kaddar
Does the kindle support custom fonts? It would be cool if one could experiment
with this and other modern fonts focusing on readibility

~~~
inconditus
If you jailbreak it and install a Chinese firmware (Duokan) it supports custom
fonts.

------
petercooper
I admit I know little about this area so I'm just throwing this out there for
wiser people to comment on. I heard on a reasonably authoritative radio
show/podcast (can't remember what, but something like a BBC Radio 4) that the
incidence of dyslexia in countries with simpler relationships between letters
and phonemes (sounds) had significantly lower reported levels of dyslexia.
Italy and Spain, for example. They were trying to make the point that
languages with more consistent phonetics are less likely to bring up issues
that would identify someone as dyslexic.

~~~
kls
As a dyslexic and with only a little knowledge of Spanish I would say that it
is probably true. When I was learning the little bit of Spanish I know it did
seem easier to infer the correct word and spelling. In the end that is what a
lot of dyslexics learn to do to cope. They infer the word. Many times they get
them wrong but with certain fonts it is easier than trying to read it.

One thing about this issue that never really gets covered is that with
repetition dyslexics can improve their condition. One of the main reasons I
read and post it to ensure that I am constantly working to improve my ability
to do so. Many times kids become discouraged and end up abandoning written
language due to difficulties with their condition. It only serves to worsen
their condition. I for example was given a computer at an early age to help
with my dyslexia, I was allowed to submit all papers typed and I was excused
from handwriting assignments due to being deemed to have a learning
disability. This was both a blessing and a curse, it was a blessing because I
became exposed to computers but a curse in the fact that to this day I am
functionally illiterate when it comes to handwriting. My handwriting looks
more akin to sandscript than English. I can read it and understand it, but to
someone else it is an entirely different language. Fortunately they have
better policies for learning disabilities now days and use a combined
approach.

On an unrelated note, there are a lot of dyslexics (the ones that don't get
discouraged or use their condition as a crutch) that end up in the math and
science fields. It has been theorized that these people's ability to see
textual items as 3D objects some how aids in their ability to visualize
abstract concepts.

I know when I do higher level math I do not see numbers. I see objects that
are represented by the numbers. I think for many just starting out in higher
maths, variables are a difficult concept, but when you see each items as a
object it helps one to look at all items in a equation as a variable some just
have known values. I think dyslexics grasp this concept earlier because it is
inherently how their mind works. Unfortunately many dyslexics never make it
that far due to years of failing in academics.

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tokenadult
The statement in the video "dyslexics rotate the letters" is largely untrue.
For some really cool details on reading research, see Reading in the Brain:
The New Science of How We Read

[http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Brain-New-Science-
Read/dp/B004...](http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Brain-New-Science-
Read/dp/B004Q7E1TY/)

by a neuroscientist who has studied these issues for years and who is familiar
with the difference that different scripts make in reading difficulties.

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bauchidgw
warning: dont visit the nextweb.com with an ipad, they use some horrible
horrible swipe/touch/die suckware, go to the source instead
<http://www.studiostudio.nl/en/project-dyslexie/>

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george_morgan
Related, the Read Regular project:
<http://www.readregular.com/english/background.html>

~~~
pygy_
> _The Read Regular typeface is not available for purchase._

... and of course, neither to download for free.

What's the point of this font? Is it used beyond the promotional web site?

I didn't try to contact the creator because I don't have any specific need for
the font right now, but I think that she's doning a disservice to dyslexic
people by not publishing it under a Creative Commons license.

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mike_ivanov
I really want a fixed-width version of this font.

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antihero
Can anyone find a TTF/OTF on that site? Incidentally, the text on this page
looks like utter shit:

<http://www.studiostudio.nl/en/project-dyslexie/>
<http://i.imgur.com/xhjKI.png>

At least in comparison to the video.

~~~
tagnu_
Regarding the font. If you are on Windows XP, enable Font Smoothing.

Desktop properties > Appearances > Effects > [x] Use the following methods to
smooth edges of screen fonts: Select [Standard]

[http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YITsgCuHhUk/TgnPnR-
FzUI/AAAAAAAAAB...](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YITsgCuHhUk/TgnPnR-
FzUI/AAAAAAAAABo/2617RaDPSd0/s1600/clear_type3.png)

~~~
antihero
I'm on Ubuntu, font smoothing is fine for anything that doesn't use some weird
JS to render it as opposed to something rational and sane like @font-face.
Thanks for trying to help, though.

~~~
tagnu_
Thank you for pointing that out. Didn't realize that I had Js enabled. (me too
Ubuntu)

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cpeterso
A similar idea is DPCustomMono2, a font adapted by "Distributed Proofreaders"
project to make proofreading for mistakes easier. It's not the prettiest font,
but it is effective.

<http://www.pgdp.net/c/faq/font_sample.php>

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pasbesoin
For those who are not color blind, what about varying the colors? For
different letters. Or, working from the presented idea of letter shapes to
reinforce orientation,changing color within a letter (e.g., "blue = bottom")?

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gte910h
Where do you get the font?

~~~
shoesfullofdust
It appears to be licensed through [http://www.lexima.nl/school-en-
behandelaar/categorie/lettert...](http://www.lexima.nl/school-en-
behandelaar/categorie/lettertype-dyslexie)

google translate:
[http://translate.google.ca/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl...](http://translate.google.ca/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lexima.nl%2Fschool-
en-behandelaar%2Fcategorie%2Flettertype-dyslexie)

~~~
norova
I appreciate the work they have done and have a great respect for the amount
of research and effort behind this, but I really wish it was more affordable.

My girlfriend is dyslexic and is struggling (even with reading lessons, etc.)
through college because of it. I had her read the example in the video and
some of the text on their site and she was able to do so much more
efficiently. I'd love to be able to purchase this font for her so she can use
it when reading/writing documents for her classes, but the amount they are
asking is simply too much for me.

I wonder if we'd be able to convince her health insurance to reimburse us for
the cost? I can dream. :)

~~~
antihero
That's insanely expensive. Why should only the dyslexic kids that go to rich
schools be given this opportunity to read easily? Surely reading is one of the
basic things that should be made as equal for everyone as possible?

------
shoesfullofdust
Additional information can be found on the designer's website:
<http://www.studiostudio.nl/en/project-dyslexie/>

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dholowiski
I know it's totally off topic but did anyone else read thar article on an
iPad? The theme they're using is a bad attempt at making the site work like an
ebook and it sucks.

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tarkin2
The font is rendered via HTML5's canvas, incidentally.

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VladRussian
emphasizing the differences between letters reminded about the hand writing
recognition on Palm.

