This weekend I was introduced to several typefaces that are designed specifically for readers with dyslexia. My personal interest in type design derives partially from my own difficulty with reading. My preference for a reading font is one that is similar to or derived from Hermann Zapf’s Optima. The default font for Tumblr is supposedly ABC Favorit, but it looks a lot more like Helvetica to me, a typeface that is also easy for me to read. Those of you who have followed us for some time will have noticed that some of the features that make our posts distinctive are the use of bolding and typographic hierarchy, as you can see in this post. As the principal style editor for our Tumblr blog, I realize now that this is because it helps me, as an individual with reading difficulties, parse out the essential elements of a blog post.
Several fonts have been developed recently to address dyslexic reading issues. Such fonts manipulate various aspects of letter form and spacing to enhance reading accessibility, including relative body weights, thickness and thinness of line, spacing between letters, adjustments to ascenders and descenders, and adjusting and deforming shapes and slants to help prevent the perception of letters reversing or swapping places. Most, if not all, are san serif. Shown here, from top to bottom, are:
Dyslexie, designed by the Dutch, dyslexic, graphic designer Christian Boer in 2008. Features include heavier line thickness at the bottom of most characters; slight downward slant on the curvature of the letters; elongation or diminishment of stems on some letters such as 'h and 'n'; added space between letters.
Gill Dyslexic, also designed by Boer. It aims to reduce the symmetry between letters, making them easier to distinguish. Like Dyslexie, the base of each letter is heavier than most other fonts, helping to orient the letter correctly.
OpenDyslexic, created by American designer Abelardo Gonzalez and released as a free and open source font in 2011. Shares many of the same design elements as Dyslexie (which has led to some conflict with Boer), such as heavy-weighted bottoms, unique shapes to each letter to prevent reversing and swapping, and wider letter spacing.
Read Regular, designed by Natascha Frensch at the Royal College of Art in London. Each character is designed to stand on its own and work together with its previous or next character. Ascenders and descenders are longer than most fonts to ensure distinction. Spacing within the o, e, a and u is enhanced and the openings in e and g are kept from visually closing in.
Lexia Readable, designed by Keith Bates at K-Type. This font has been called "Comic Sans for adults." Much like the other fonts, Lexia features long ascenders and descenders combined with generous letter spacing and asymmetrical lowercase b and d to help distinguish letters.
Sylexiad, designed by Robert Hillier, a Senior Lecturer at Norwich University College of Arts, and based on his PhD dissertation conducted on the font. Sylexiad features long ascenders and descenders, light weight, uniform strokes, perpendicular design, and generous inter-word spacing.
Despite all the laudable effort spent on these designs, however, no independent research has found that any font significantly improves reading speed or comprehension for dyslexics. This 2013 study, for example, found that Helvetica, Courier, Arial, and Verdana were the best fonts for dyslexics, the same fonts of choice for many efficient readers. Specially-designed typefaces may not really matter. It appears that san serif fonts with generous spacing between letters and words are most efficient, whether you are dyslexic or not.
Still, I do find the fonts shown here to be rather readable.
