

Practices That Hurt Dyslexic Users - bankerofpawns
http://uxmovement.com/content/6-surprising-bad-practices-that-hurt-dyslexic-users

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Semiapies
Short of a <pre> block or a PDF, how do you put double spaces after a sentence
on the web? In browsers, that's reduced to a single space automatically.

~~~
dandelany
&nbsp;[regular space]

&nbsp;&nbsp; would work too, but stops the line from breaking after sentences.

Not that its a good idea... But that's how you'd do it :)

~~~
Semiapies
How could you use the innocent non-breaking space for such evil?

More seriously - is anything like that used in the wild? I'm just trying to
figure out why they gave a suggestion to stop doing something that it takes
such improbable work-arounds to do in the first place. Double-spacing after
sentences sticks out like a sore thumb in proportional fonts.

~~~
isleyaardvark
I seem to remember seeing a WYSIWYG text editor add those nbsps when there was
more than one space in a row, but I could be mistaken.

~~~
ams6110
Yes, at least some of them do.

~~~
prawn
Leaving some clients to use nbsps in place of tables or tabs to try and layout
columns, bullet lists, etc. Eek!

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techiferous
You're going to hate me for this, but when I was a middle school teacher I
gave all of my quizzes in Comic Sans font because I had heard that Comic Sans
was an easy font for dyslexics to read. (I have yet to come across proof of
this, though.)

Edit: this mentions Comic Sans as a somewhat dyslexic-friendly font:
<http://www.angelfire.com/tn3/writing/DesignUsersReadDis.pdf>

------
ams6110
_When you use justified text, you’re not only making text difficult to read
for non-dyslexic users, but even more so for dyslexic users._

Since when is fully justified text deemed difficult to read? I guess that's
why nearly all printed books use fully justified typesetting?

~~~
mccutchen
Most of the criticisms of justified text are based on the fact that web
browsers use "naive" justification, without intelligent hyphenation. This can
lead to

    
    
        lines  where    words   are   spaced   far   apart
    

which many people find harder to read.

Printed books are justified and hyphenated, so this is not an issue.

~~~
teilo
It is not just about hyphenation. Even with good hyphenation you will still
leave rivers of white space unless you are intelligently managing word
spacing.

Unfortunately, browsers are not the only offenders here. Almost almost every
word processor in existence is brain-dead when it comes to justification. To
my knowledge, there are only a handful of programs that get it right:
InDesign, Quark, and Word (but only if you turn on a "Compatibility" option
called, "Use Full Justification like Word Perfect"). I am deliberately
excluding dinosaurs like Word Perfect and Pagemaker, which also get it right.
Oh, and TeX. I am excluding TeX. Tough cookies.

What do I mean by "right"? That there should be more than one tool in your
line-breaking toolbox. Hyphenation is one tool. The other is minimum word
spacing. This means that instead of only allowing space between words to grow,
you also allow it to shrink, up to a set limit. In almost every word processor
(Including OOo and derivates, Pages, Mellel and Nisus on the Mac, etc.), no
attempt whatsoever is made to reduce the spacing between words to allow
another word to fit, or a hyphenation break to occur at a better location.

~~~
ugh
Professional layout tools also allow the letter-spacing to grow and shrink and
you can tell them to stretch or squeeze letters.

Doing this is obviously very controversial but I think that allowing InDesign
to stretch and squeeze letters by a percent or half a percent is visually not
noticeable (at least with body text) and can noticeably reduce the number of
large holes in your text, especially if the columns of your text are
relatively narrow.

Other word processors don’t give you that option at all.

~~~
colanderman
There's also a TeX package, microtype, which does this same thing (among other
optimizations, such as punctuation overhang).

I've found that text with variable font widths looks "off" to my eyes, but
because the effect is so subtle I'm not sure that this isn't just
psychological.

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wnoise
They recommend not using pure black text on pure white foreground,
recommending toning both the background and foreground toward grey, but never
mention the possibility of light-on-dark, for avoiding that whole "staring
into the spotlight" feeling.

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vacri
When you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

Sure, it's good to keep disadvantaged users in mind, but some counterpoints:

1) As already mentioned, you have to go out of your way to double-space after
periods in webpages. It's something to keep in mind, sure, but it's rare.

3) Gray on gray. As I started reading the article, I found that it was a
little difficult to read because of low contrast.

5) Serif fonts. Used properly, serif fonts increase readability for normals.

6) Italics. You shouldn't be using italics for lengthy tracts anyway, because
it's meant to be an effect signifying something (in-line quote, foreign word
etc). It's meant to be 'unusual' to mark something as different and should be
used in short doses anyway.

Particularly with respect to #3 and #5, the lesson to take away should be
"know your audience". If you're writing for the general public, keep dyslexics
in mind, but don't make readability harder for the majority to satisfy a
minority - particularly with respect to contrast.

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TheSOB88
Sounds like someone needs to tell the Dyslexic Association of America about
Readability (or maybe a dyslexic programmer should tweak it first).

<http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/>

