Typophile

Font for Dyslexic People

bjorn

Hi all,

First of all, a merry christmas and a happy new year to you all.

I was browsing the web looking for info about dyslexia. Suddenly I found smth very interesting.
Natascha Frensch, a Dutch designer made a typeface for dyslectic people, called 'Read'.

You can find more info here:
http://www.readregular.com

A lot of care is given to 'b' and 'd' kind of problems. People with dyslexia have problems with characters that look alike.
So a 'd' is not just a mirrored 'b' but it needs more characteristics to distinguish it from the 'b'. Same goes for 'p' and 'q' etc.

I love this initiative. Maybe some of you have interesting things to say about this. I myself do not design type, I just use it as a graphic designer.

Hrant H Papazian

Yes, it's very interesting, for the effort/intent if not the given results.

BTW:
http://www.typophile.com/forums/messages/30/18498.html
http://typographi.ca/000715.php#000715

hhp

bjorn

Aha, I knew I should have done a search first. Mmhh, i was a bit too enthousiastic. Thanks for the links.

John Hudson

People with dyslexia have problems with characters that look alike.

The biggest problem I have with Frensch's project is that it is so poorly documented that it is impossible to tell whether the design decisions actually address anything more than a particular sub-problem of a particular kind of dyslexia. Even if you look at the rather sparse information on dyselxia provided at http://www.readregular.com/english/dyslexia.html it isn't at all clear how differentiating letterforms in the way Frensch has done addresses any of the reading disorder symptoms illustrated there.

shreyas

Frensch's project seems to target only one of several different dyslexias, too, which dilutes its worth. On the other hand, many other dyslexias can't really be tackled at all with typography - I wonder if it's the same with character-recognition dyslexia.

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