Open Dyslexic Fonts

[Renegade]

This seems pretty nifty - Open Dyslexic fonts - fonts to help people with dyslexia.

http://dyslexicfonts.com/



And at Github:

https://github.com/a...ngoist/open-dyslexic

It sounds like a interesting approach.

[joiwind]

Yes, very good idea, very neat and no doubt very helpful.

(Note that I didn't fall into the rtap of making a koje.)

[Renegade]

Yes, very good idea, very neat and no doubt very helpful.

(Note that I didn't fall into the rtap of making a koje.)

-joiwind (October 08, 2012, 08:44 AM)

I'm not sure how a Rural Transit Assistance Program can be use to create a small island off the south coast of South Korea that is mostly renowned for shipbuilding, bars, and hot women that are ready to take your money...

Sgih... cna't seem to mkae a fnnuy tehre.

A friend of mine is dyslexic, and when he finished university, you can imagine he had a party for it. I think he went on to become a successful drug dealer... kind of lost contact with him a few years ago...

Another friend is doing extremely well with his dyslexia. He suffered from it extremely badly. Today, he's posting on Facebook regularly, which is leagues advanced from how he used to deal with things, i.e. not read period.

It's pretty common, but very often people feel ashamed, and hide it.

[vrgrrl]

I've been doing work in accessibility (mostly videogames) for over a decade and very little has had potential impact on games and more. I'm dyslexic -- but I wasn't diagnosed until college. My brain had come up with tricks for me to get around it. It's such an individual thing -- some people will never learn to read and others (like me) will read like mad. I'm admittedly not a hyper quick reader but I enjoy it greatly.

Anyway, there are some other fonts that have been going around to help with dyslexia (I personally don't don't find OpenDyslexia helpful -- it's too much like reading Comic Sans for me. But I'm glad to see more work being done in this area! I imagine it will take a long while before this hits things like Kindles, etc, which I exclusively read books on because I can change the font size, the line spacing, etc.

Check out some of these other examples:

http://www.identifont.com/samples/fontsmith/Me.gif
http://www.identifont.com/samples/clubtype/SassoonPrimary.gif
http://luc.devroye.org/ChristiaanTheoBoer-Dyslexie-2008.png
http://www.robsfonts.com/examples/Resources/fig5.jpeg
http://www.bl.uk/learning/images/whywrite/RR-alphabet.jpg
http://www.biancoeneroedizioni.com/shop/public/biancoenero-sito-5.jpg

[app103]

I've been wondering if there are any web fonts that would be better for dyslexics than the standard Arial/Verdana/Georgia that most web designers work with. I'd be more than willing to start using them on all my sites and blogs, if I knew what to use.

My brain had come up with tricks for me to get around it. It's such an individual thing

-vrgrrl (October 08, 2012, 01:36 PM)

Being dyscalculic, I know exactly what you are talking about. My bag of tricks made teachers think I was gifted. As long as they never saw my scratch paper (and they never did), they never knew I was doing things like solving long division with addition...and counting domino dot patterns in my head.

[cranioscopical]

This seems pretty nifty - Open Dyslexic fonts

-Renegade (October 08, 2012, 08:28 AM)

The more work that's done in this area the better and it seems a good, logical approach.
That said, trying to read the font myself threatens to incur an almost instant headache. It reminds me of printed output from the very early days of DTP.

[40hz]

This seems pretty nifty - Open Dyslexic fonts

-Renegade (October 08, 2012, 08:28 AM)

The more work that's done in this area the better and it seems a good, logical approach.
That said, trying to read the font myself threatens to incur an almost instant headache. It reminds me of printed output from the very early days of DTP.

-cranioscopical (October 09, 2012, 04:13 PM)

+1 on both points.

I keep wishing they'd change the ribbon. Because to my eyes, the one they're using looks used up.

[tomos]

This seems pretty nifty - Open Dyslexic fonts

-Renegade (October 08, 2012, 08:28 AM)

The more work that's done in this area the better and it seems a good, logical approach.
That said, trying to read the font myself threatens to incur an almost instant headache. It reminds me of printed output from the very early days of DTP.

-cranioscopical (October 09, 2012, 04:13 PM)

have you seen the fonts linked by vrgrrl?
They actually look quite nice.
(One of them is almost exactly the same as the one Ren posted, but otherwise...)

[cranioscopical]

have you seen the fonts linked by vrgrrl?
They actually look quite nice.

-tomos (October 09, 2012, 04:35 PM)

I did look, and I agree with you.

[40hz]

Interesting series of posts by Dave Collier focusing on this type of font thinking. Link here.

The author is skeptical of some of the arguments and claims for what is currently being presented as dyslexic-friendly typography. (vrgrrl's comments seem to coincide with what Collier is saying in places.)

The Font Bullies
A Little Knowledge, and They’re Off! – August 2012

Why should anyone whose job it isn’t feel they need to be an expert in fonts (typefaces)? But they do, and there is something telling about it. I have yet to quite work out what, but I have some hypotheses.

The so-called Dyslexia Style Guide from the Dyslexia Association gives something of a clue as to what is going on, for it is not just fonts that are pontificated upon here, but a whole raft of things that the writer has learned a little bit about, and obviously thinks they are now the world’s expert on. And instead of coming over as expert, they sound to anyone who actually does know a little bit more about these topics as rather a joke, like the bloke on the bar stool who knows all there is to know about everything. And sadly, like the man on the bar stool, there are people out there prepared to believe this rubbish.

Rubbish? Who says so? Well, OK then, bad science, or unsupported assertions; assertions for which the evidence seems to be either that someone I know who knows about these things said so, or I tried it with my some of my students/patients/clients/mother and they liked it – classic bar stool.
.
.
.

Just for some background on the author of the above:

My specialist area of academic study has been the interaction between people and computer screen displays, and I got a masters degree in that, after studying for some time in the psychology department of London Guildhall University, as it was then called.