How an Innovative New Font Can Help Dyslexics Read
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dyslexiefont.com(NEW YORK) — As a child, Christian Boer had difficulty with reading and writing.
The Dutch artist said he was eventually diagnosed with dyslexia, which explained why he often reversed letters in his head and why sentences on the page often ran together in a confusing blur.
In his last year of art school in 2008, he began wondering why people with dyslexia had so much trouble with words but no trouble at all recognizing objects, even if they were tipped upside down or turned around.
In a stroke of inspiration, the now 33-year-old realized he could design a font that more closely resembled 3-D objects, making it easier for dyslexics to read.
About 10 percent of the population has dyslexia, according to the International Dyslexia Association. This means their brains struggle to decode words on a page, making it a challenge to read and write.
A 2013 Spanish study looked at whether changing some key features in fonts would help dyslexics conquer some of their problem with interpreting the written word. The researchers found that serif fonts, which include little flourishes on the ends of letters, and fonts where letters vary in size and spacing were the most difficult for people with dyslexia to read.
To address some of these problems Boer designed his new font, Dyslexie, so the bottoms of the letters are thicker and bolder.
“You don’t flip them around in your brain so they are easier to keep track of,” he explained.
Boer also changed any character that was similar to another character to avoid confusion. For instance, he redesigned the “s” so it was less likely to be mistaken for a “5” and he enlarged the bubble in the center of a lower case “e” so it looked less like an “o.” Since dyslexics tend to skip over pauses in sentences, he also enlarged the period and comma and made capital letters extra bold when they appeared at the start of a sentence.
“It worked for me right away and when I sent it out to others it worked for them too,” he told ABC News.
Nearly 100,000 people have downloaded Dsylexie so far, confirming the need for such a font. However, Ben Shifrin, vice president of International Dyslexia Association, said there is no single font that will work for every dyslexic.
“What we do see for some students is that fonts make a difference, but some don’t,” he said.
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