
Open Dyslexic - Dyslexia Fonts - joeyespo
http://dyslexicfonts.com/
======
nostromo
I'm dyslexic and I love this idea! However this font is much harder to read.

Here are my trouble letters in this font: <http://i.imgur.com/ilkUV.png> Note
that there is no indication what letters these are other than by direction
(which is really hard for many dyslexics).

Compare this to a regular font: <http://i.imgur.com/mbi54.png> Note that there
are hints in the serifs that distinguish direction.

By reversing the regular serif font, you can see these hints:
<http://i.imgur.com/t1sxB.png=>

Also, the kerning is pretty bad: <http://i.imgur.com/A9PJk.png>

~~~
antijingoist
There are several versions of the font available, and the newest on github and
dafont have some of those issues fixed.

There are Windows specific issues, and those are being worked on.

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jdietrich
There are several comments already about the scientific validity of this font,
but the issue is much deeper.

"Dyslexia" cannot be meaningfully distinguished from "poor reading skills" in
any measurable way. There is no evidence for the efficacy of any intervention
that is uniquely suited to dyslexia; All effective interventions are equally
effective in improving the reading skills of non-dyslexic individuals. There
is no evidence for the efficacy of special fonts, coloured overlays or any
other visual aid. These interventions are simply placebo and are likely to
distract from proven interventions which are known to be effective.

The popular notion of dyslexia as a unique neurological disorder has no basis
in fact. There is no agreed-upon definition of dyslexia beyond the very
general description of "a significant impairment in reading ability without
significant cognitive impairment". The intellectually honest thing would be to
abandon the term completely in favour of a simple factual description such as
"poor reading skills", but this is politically unlikely.

<http://www.nrdc.org.uk/projects_details.asp?ProjectID=75>

~~~
evincarofautumn
I agree that it’s disingenuous to give a specific-sounding label to a somewhat
ill-defined thing, but you must consider the perspective of a dyslexic person.
I have a close friend, intelligent and hardworking, an excellent speaker—who
simply finds it difficult to read and to express himself in writing, or to
learn foreign languages. Whether he can meaningfully be called “dyslexic” is
of no import. Having that label to attach to his difficulties when he was
younger let him more easily find resources to improve his written language
skills. It doesn’t matter if a term is historically or etymologically
inaccurate; what matters is the actual usage.

~~~
jdietrich
I'll be blunt about this - the term dyslexia exists to absolve incompetent
teachers and schools of responsibility. All the available evidence points to
the fact that dyslexics have simply been incompetently taught and never gained
a coherent sense of how language works. By labelling the student as dyslexic
we perpetuate the lie that the reading difficulty has come from within the
individual, rather than from the failings of the adults around them.

It is very likely that your friend is absolutely no different from anyone
else, but for the fact that they had a poor early experience of reading. A
failed education system has found it more convenient to convince your friend
that they have a neurological disorder, rather than admit to their
culpability. Your friend should not have needed any clinical diagnosis to
access proper teaching; We should be thoroughly ashamed of the continuing
systematic failures that create such a situation.

~~~
white_bread
I get the point you're making but reading this is bumming me out. Dyslexia is
by far the most common learning disability. It's estimated that 5 to 10
percent of people are affected. By saying that the teachers are incompetent is
dismissive but ultimately minimizes the struggles of the people who have to
figure out how to deal with this very real learning difference.

~~~
jdietrich
But there isn't any evidence that there's anything fundamentally different
about dyslexic students. We have no proof whatsoever that they enter school
any different to their non-dyslexic peers, but we do know that they leave
school with poorer reading skills. To say that these students are dyslexic,
rather than saying that we have failed to teach them to read, is a political
rather than scientific decision. We are arbitrarily labelling those most
poorly-served by school as learning disabled, for no rational reason other
than to absolve the system of blame.

~~~
white_bread
I'm not big on throwing this out there but I've struggled with dyslexia. As an
example I wasn't able to read until I was in 5th grade. I can get lost in my
own neighborhood. I have trouble learning something without physically writing
it down or actually doing the activity. I'm 44 now and I wouldn't say that was
a lack of skill from my teachers. When I grew up in the 70's and early 80s
there was very little awareness about what to do with kids with dyslexia but
it seems like your point is that if these kids just were taught properly then
we wouldn't see this symptoms. From my own personal experience I can tell you
that's not true at all. I also have a friend who's so dyslexic that he can't
drive. He's so crippled by it that he can't even type in his own pin number.
If he needs money from the bank I'll drive him and get the cash out of the ATM
for him. I'm sure I could teach him how to type in 4 numbers but that's
clearly not going to help. This is just a personal story with a sample size of
two. I get that. With that said, maybe will shed some light on something
that's affected me in a very profound way. best.

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tokenadult
It would take some careful research to show helpful (if at all) different
fonts are for people with reading difficulties, who after all are still going
to be in a world full of standard fonts.

Much of the best research on dyslexia is gathered into the very interesting
recent book Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read

<http://readinginthebrain.pagesperso-orange.fr/intro.htm>

[http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Brain-The-Science-
Read/dp/0143...](http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Brain-The-Science-
Read/dp/0143118056)

by Stanislas Dehaene. There are definitely educational approaches that help
prevent the development of dyslexia in young readers or that alleviate it in
older readers. Cross-national comparisons of reading in different scripts for
differing languages, and comparisons of reading performance with differing
typefaces for English (both reported on in the book) don't suggest that letter
forms are the MAIN issue in dyslexia, although helping readers notice distinct
letter shapes is helpful for readers who don't distinguish them. It would be a
good idea to use the kind of brain-imagining studies mentioned by Dehaene (a
neuroscientist) to test the usefulness of different fonts for readers who are
categorized as having dyslexia.

As they say in Chinese, "實事求是" (the standard English translation is "seek
truth from facts," which will do for this Hacker News comment), so whatever
helps dyslexic persons, more power to it, but test to make sure how helpful it
is and to find out what else would be helpful too.

~~~
rmc
_who after all are still going to be in a world full of standard fonts._

That is true, but one of the advantages of electronics/computers over paper is
that you could set this entirely as your only font for the web, your ereader
etc.

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ComputerGuru
Is this scientifically-backed or just some guy claiming it's better?

Because I'm not dyslexic, however reading through that text I had a number of
dyslexic moments, which would lead me to conclude it's either a very good
attempt or a very bad one.

For example, the word "bold" came across as "blood" and other fleeting
examples that I can no longer recall.

~~~
Someone
It looks like a clone of <http://www.studiostudio.nl/project-dyslexie>. That,
IMO, is more smart marketing than science. The only underlying research I can
find is
[http://www.ilo.gw.utwente.nl/ilo/attachments/032_Masterthesi...](http://www.ilo.gw.utwente.nl/ilo/attachments/032_Masterthesis_Leeuw.pdf),
which states:

 _"Results: No significant difference in speed was measured, but there were
some positive and negative effects found for the interaction font and dyslexia
on the accuracy for reading words and non-words.

Conclusion: Reading with the font “Dyslexie” does not improve the reading
speed for reading words. However some specific type of reading errors are
decreased, but others are increased. Overall the dyslectics read fewer errors
while reading the words printed in the font “Dyslexie”.

Further research in needed to examine the hypotheses that the reading speed
and accuracy increases while reading texts that are printed in the font
“Dyslexie”."_

So, I would treat it as "if it works for you: fine", but I wouldn't start
using it in physical print, as some publishers have done.

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cheald
Speaking as a non-dyslexic, that font is actually really hard to read.

Very interesting project, though.

~~~
Vivtek
Speaking as a dyslexic, it hurts my eyes.

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raldi
I'd love to see some details about why fonts like this are easier for dyslexic
people to read.

~~~
DanBC
One theory is that the "heavier" base "anchors" the font, and stops letters
dancing.

I have no idea what the research is like.

This old website has some calm information: (<http://www.dyslexic.com/fonts>)

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munaf
According to research [1], fonts similar to this don't entirely do the trick,
but they help with certain errors.

[1]
[http://www.ilo.gw.utwente.nl/ilo/attachments/032_Masterthesi...](http://www.ilo.gw.utwente.nl/ilo/attachments/032_Masterthesis_Leeuw.pdf)
(page 3)

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pessimism
As someone working on a free open-source project that is almost as text-
intensive as it can get, I was really happy to see a dyslexia font/typeface
that was truly free, when Marco Arment announced it would be included in
Instapaper.

The gist of the research is to create typefaces whose characters, even flipped
and rotated, cannot be confused at all.

I've seen others like <http://redd.it/j277w> that, as interesting as the look,
weren't free, and as a result come with a lot of problems.

There are two approaches:

1\. Client-side typeface support.

2\. Service-side typeface support.

People with dyslexia can easily purchase a dyslexia typeface and embed it in
their OS and force their browsers to display websites with the new typeface,
while service-providers can't always just fork over five bucks and link to the
.ttf or .otf file without getting into trouble.

Paid typefaces are great for clients, but aren't always for service-providers.

I have always wondered why Apple have never provided a dyslexia typeface with
iOS and OS X. Considering their efforts in accessibility, maybe they don't
believe in the efficacy of dyslexia-friendly typefaces.

While there is still a discussion of quality[1] and efficacy to be had, the
real news here is that someone made the effort of providing people with a
truly free dyslexia typeface, which has been sorely missed to this day.

[1]: I think what irks me is the large font weight even for the regular font.
The bold font is barely discernable from the regular.

~~~
antijingoist
Thanks for the kind words. :)

Oddly enough, it shows up less bold on a non-windows machine.

Eulexia is an SIL-OFL one that is thinner too. But I haven't worked on the
windows font smoothing with that one yet. :-/

~~~
pessimism
Thanks for the typeface. I really appreciate it.

If you want an example of it in action, you can go to a deployed example of my
app at <http://pygm.us/kzXSwSRV> with the log-in _admin//password_. I haven't
gotten around to letting people change their settings, but you can use the
button in the sidebar to see it in effect. If you apply the CSS in one of the
threads, you may see why I find the font weight to be a bit on the heavy side.
But to each their own and all.

Of course, now that Instapaper supports the typeface, you should check it out
in it as well, if you have an iOS device.

Thanks again! :)

~~~
antijingoist
Regular user of Instapaper. :) As soon as I got an email about it, I upgraded
Instapaper to check it out. Made my day. :D

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jiggy2011
That's interesting. I've received documents from people in the past that have
looked like this and my first reaction was always "why did this person send me
a document in the ugliest font possible?".

Never thought there was actually a reason for it.

~~~
eru
They thought you were dyslexic? (Otherwise, there's no reason to send people
text with those fonts---as opposed to using that font in your editor.)

~~~
jiggy2011
I'm assuming they were dyslexic themselves and found it easier to read that
way and assumed everyone else did too, either that or they just forgot to
change the font.

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drseide
I think there is no single font that will help "dyslexics" because many
students in our practice have told us different preferences in the font sizes,
shapes / serifs, colors, and character spacing re: readability.

As a group, there are some scientific studies which show the need for larger
font and increased character spacing, among other issues. The option to
customize will help some people though.

In our dyslexia practice, many kids tell us that they prefer Comic Sans with a
larger font...the extra shaping of letters helps distinguish mirror letters
like b and d.

~~~
antijingoist
FWIW, I think your thoughts are more of a reality than just your opinion.
Thanks for saying it better than I can. Even in these comments, there are
people that love it, and people that can't use it.

There are also many forms of dyslexia. Some are related to letter shapes. Some
involve glare, etc. etc. etc. No one solution will help everyone. That is why
there are color filters, lenses, rainbow'd lines of text, fonts like these,
etc.

In the emails I've gotten the past few days, and since I've started this
project, there are people who insist their life has changed, people who just
like reading with it, and people who are bothered by it. It's just the nature
of things.

edit: spellings and such.

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damiro
I have tried reading this font, and had a lot of trouble although not
dyslexic. What I gather from your posts is that greatest importance is having
a font with letters highly distinguishable from one another (so they don't
become misinterpreted). As an idea, a set of random dots can be added around
each letter. As the person encounters the same letters while reading, they
would encounter the same set of random dots for those letters. I am not sure
if this would work, but it can be done and tested.

~~~
antijingoist
Thats the theory behind "Dyslexic Notation." You can try it if you'd like:
<https://github.com/antijingoist/AlphaSymbolic>

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alpb
Instapaper has just integrated this font to iOS app. I researched Internet a
little bit today and this seems a good and free alternative to dyslexics.

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evincarofautumn
This is really fascinating, and a good addition to all the typography articles
currently on the front page. A designer can forget that standards of usability
depend on, fittingly, the _users_. There are broad guidelines, but no
objective standards—the narrower the audience, the more specific optimisations
are available to you as a designer. Don’t be afraid to take advantage of them.

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bcoates
Is the weird kerning on the lowercase i intentional?

More than anything it reminds me of the Team Fortress 2 font
<http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Fonts>. I wonder if they're both the result
of some optimization process.

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poopicus
Was I the only one who thought these were going to be normal fonts with some
of the letters switched around?

~~~
dllthomas
No.

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mike_ivanov
I will donate $200 if they release a monospaced version.

~~~
sethish
I opened a feature request issue on their github about it.
<https://github.com/antijingoist/open-dyslexic/issues/6>

~~~
antijingoist
Thanks! Just saw that!

