I’m not dyslexic but I have macular issues which make reading a bit difficult. Switching to the open dyslexic font on my kindle has been a game changer.
It kinda “anchors” the text so the letters stay where they’re meant to. A tiny spot in centre of my vision is blurry, sometimes I miss words in the middle of a sentence. For some reason this font helps with that.
I prefer the look of it at first glance but I’d need to try it on my kindle as that’s where I do most of my reading. Afaik kindle only supports open dyslexic.
EDIT: @jackbydev I just wanted to say thanks for the tip on the font. I’ve been using it on my kindle since you told me about it. It’s doesn’t work quite as well as open dyslexic for me but it works enough for me to use it as my default font - and it’s so much nicer to look at!
Makes sense and I appreciate all the answers. I’m actually dyslexic myself, but it’s mild and more likely to jumble coming out than going in so I’ve never felt the need to prioritize practicality over aesthetic preference. And while I knew some fonts helped I didn’t know what actually made them help. But at the same time I do hope we keep moving towards more and more dyslexia friendly fonts being defaults. Especially as we can get them more and more aesthetically varied to fill different moods and tones
Im dyslexic and can confirm the font is ugly as hell but significantly helps readability.
Dyslexia varies person to person but the general concept is that letters can flip horizontally, vertically, change locations or jitter / fuzz. It’s not that you actually see them that way, it’s a brain interpretation issue. It’s kind of like the difference between speed reading and normal reading out loud. You look at a word and your brain recognizes the word as a whole and what it means and how it sounds. A dyslexic generally cant make that connection and have to see words as individual letters that are sounded out in order to make the word. So you see soup and know its food and you see soap and know you wash with it. But a dyslexic those two words are almost exactly the same. So we need the rest of the sentence for context to know what that word is… and the rest of the sentence may require the previous sentence to know the context of other words…
Think of a word as a picture. Together all of the parts of the picture have to come together to form say the Mona Lisa. But if you took all the parts of her face and mixed them up… it would still be the Mona Lisa… but it wouldnt make any sense. Having the thickened parts on the bottom of each letter help anchor the letters as well as having every letter / number be unique helps your brain to interpret everything correctly “faster”. Most dyslexic people, unless they have a really bad case, can learn to read but they end up reading a lot slower than a normal person. This font helps speed it up… to bad it’s ugly as sin.
I dont know if that makes any sense or if it’s just me rambling…
Well letters have a definite bottom. It probably helps brains to not just flip things like p and b easily.
Letters aren’t just mirrors either. q and p are actually different. Letters like d and b have different directional flairs instead of just being a mirror.
By making the bottom of each lettet bold it help guide the ryrs. Akso all grammar marks .,! Etc are extra large. Also they increase the space betwen letters and words. i use it on my devices when i can. It helps
It’s not about me lol, this is a fundamental criterion for a good font, a font that doesn’t differentiate between glyphs is objectively a bad font, it is bad at the ONE SINGLE JOB it has.
I bought a Spanish textbook recently and it uses multiple fonts throughout for this exact reason. I hadn’t seen in it in a physical book before but if it helps people I’m all for it.
That’s ”open dyslexic”. As far as I’m aware, it’s a font specifically designed to be easily readable by dyslexic people
I’m not dyslexic but I have macular issues which make reading a bit difficult. Switching to the open dyslexic font on my kindle has been a game changer.
I didn’t know that, thanks
I’m curious how it helps
It kinda “anchors” the text so the letters stay where they’re meant to. A tiny spot in centre of my vision is blurry, sometimes I miss words in the middle of a sentence. For some reason this font helps with that.
What’s your opinion on Atkinson Hyperlegible?
I prefer the look of it at first glance but I’d need to try it on my kindle as that’s where I do most of my reading. Afaik kindle only supports open dyslexic.
EDIT: @jackbydev I just wanted to say thanks for the tip on the font. I’ve been using it on my kindle since you told me about it. It’s doesn’t work quite as well as open dyslexic for me but it works enough for me to use it as my default font - and it’s so much nicer to look at!
Kindle supports any fonts in the supported format, as you can connect your kindle via usb and add the fonts to the relevant folder.
TIL, thanks!
It’s fancier but I don’t think it does the same as OD.
I like it better.
Makes sense and I appreciate all the answers. I’m actually dyslexic myself, but it’s mild and more likely to jumble coming out than going in so I’ve never felt the need to prioritize practicality over aesthetic preference. And while I knew some fonts helped I didn’t know what actually made them help. But at the same time I do hope we keep moving towards more and more dyslexia friendly fonts being defaults. Especially as we can get them more and more aesthetically varied to fill different moods and tones
Im dyslexic and can confirm the font is ugly as hell but significantly helps readability.
Dyslexia varies person to person but the general concept is that letters can flip horizontally, vertically, change locations or jitter / fuzz. It’s not that you actually see them that way, it’s a brain interpretation issue. It’s kind of like the difference between speed reading and normal reading out loud. You look at a word and your brain recognizes the word as a whole and what it means and how it sounds. A dyslexic generally cant make that connection and have to see words as individual letters that are sounded out in order to make the word. So you see soup and know its food and you see soap and know you wash with it. But a dyslexic those two words are almost exactly the same. So we need the rest of the sentence for context to know what that word is… and the rest of the sentence may require the previous sentence to know the context of other words…
Think of a word as a picture. Together all of the parts of the picture have to come together to form say the Mona Lisa. But if you took all the parts of her face and mixed them up… it would still be the Mona Lisa… but it wouldnt make any sense. Having the thickened parts on the bottom of each letter help anchor the letters as well as having every letter / number be unique helps your brain to interpret everything correctly “faster”. Most dyslexic people, unless they have a really bad case, can learn to read but they end up reading a lot slower than a normal person. This font helps speed it up… to bad it’s ugly as sin.
I dont know if that makes any sense or if it’s just me rambling…
I don’t think it’s ugly, I think it’s kinda cute, like these guys:
It’s good to hear it helps you; I’d heard about the font but then I heard that the claimed benefits had been disproved.
Well letters have a definite bottom. It probably helps brains to not just flip things like p and b easily.
Letters aren’t just mirrors either. q and p are actually different. Letters like d and b have different directional flairs instead of just being a mirror.
By making the bottom of each lettet bold it help guide the ryrs. Akso all grammar marks .,! Etc are extra large. Also they increase the space betwen letters and words. i use it on my devices when i can. It helps
It can even help with attention-focussing issues like in ADHD. Marvelous invention, really.
Ironically i find it vastly more difficult to focus on than normal fonts, all i want is to FUCKING MAKE GLYPHS LOOK DIFFERENT TO EACH OTHER
iIlL| if these don’t look OBVIOUSLY different in a font it is a bad font and must die.
Is this loss?
Whatever font is default on lemmy.world on my Firefox on Windows 10 is making most of them look the same, blegh.
Look up “Atkinson Hyperlegible”
https://brailleinstitute.org/freefont for the curious but lazy
Yeah i read another comment about it and tried it, seems to let me read without my glasses!
The design criteria for that font are amazing, and the result shows it.
Those look very different from each other to me.
It’s decent, but i find leaving out serifs on capital I to be very silly for a font that wants to be legible.
I’m trying atkinson hyperlegible now and it makes good use of the serifs.
Yes, things that aren’t designed for you should die, I feel the same
It’s not about me lol, this is a fundamental criterion for a good font, a font that doesn’t differentiate between glyphs is objectively a bad font, it is bad at the ONE SINGLE JOB it has.
Its job is to help people with dyslexia, and it does, even if it doesn’t help everyone with dyslexia
I bought a Spanish textbook recently and it uses multiple fonts throughout for this exact reason. I hadn’t seen in it in a physical book before but if it helps people I’m all for it.
Sadly, there’s no real evidence it works.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5629233/
Except for the capital “I” it’ s really easy on the eye.