A font has been developed by a Dutch graphic designer, which will make letters easier to read and comprehend for people with dyslexia. Designer Christian Boer is dyslexic himself. He created a font called Dyslexie to keep letters “tied down,” helping readers not to flip them in their minds. He did this by changing the letters to make the undersides bolder, letting gravity do the work of keeping them right side up. He also made letters more distinct and spaced wider apart. Some letters are angled slightly to keep them from looking like others. Punctuation and capital letters are bolded at the beginnings and ends of sentences, to keep the text from running together.
Dyslexie began as Boer’s thesis at the Utrecht School of Arts in the Netherlands. He has twice tested the font, once informally among a group of eight dyslexic students, and later as the subject of a formal, scientific study as part of his thesis project. Both seemed to prove that the font was helpful. Participants reported that Dyslexie enabled them to read longer and with better comprehension (compared to other fonts).
Currently, the Dyslexie font is available in English and Dutch and can be used with both Mac and Windows operating systems. It will soon be able to be used on tablets such as iPads through an assistive reading and writing application designed by LingApps.
Many schools in the U.S. are already using the font. Boer does not claim that it is a “cure” for dyslexia, but he sees it more “like a wheelchair,” he tells Scientific American.
Dyslexie can be purchased through the website. To view an article in the Dyslexie font, click here.
Source: SmartPlanet
