During our class on April 1st, 2019, we learned of the new and innovative attempts to make typeface more accessible for more people. The basic idea behind typefaces such as Frutiger was to increase the legibility and help people process the information presented flawlessly and effortlessly. However, as we have learned, for those who are more dyslexic than others can have hard time perceiving the delivered information.
Dyslexia is a learning disorder which leads to difficulty reading due to issues decoding the letters and words. Those who suffer from dyslexia, when their brains process visual information, can often subconsciously switch, rotate, and mirror letters, which makes them harder to identify the characters (Fernandes). Their brains perceive two-dimensional letters as three-dimensional objects that can be manipulated in the three-dimensional space. Therefore, the letter “b” can easily be manipulated in its perception to a “d” or a “p” or a “q”.
This is partly due to the fact that, in traditional typefaces, letters are made to be as uniform as possible. If the letter “d” looks same as a “d”, a “p”, and a “q”, or if the arch of an “h” looks same as that of an “n”, the typeface can achieve a clean and harmonic look (Gray). However, when these letters share the same characteristics, it becomes easier for those with dyslexia to subconsciously manipulate the letters in their brain and confuse them.
One effort to remedy such issue and truly achieve an accessible typeface design is change in the fundamental ‘rules’ of the typeface and creating a new font that can be read easily for the dyslexics. Designer Christian Boer who was diagnosed with dyslexia at the age of six has made such effort and created a typeface Dyslexie, aimed to overcome the problems those like him can have when reading (Gray).
This font, which we also learned during the Monday lecture, includes some key features which Boer claims makes the font more accessible for those who suffer from dyslexia. First, the symmetry and uniformity of the letters are abandoned (Gray). Namely, the vertical strokes such as the stems, ascenders, and descenders are not unified. Some letters have longer strokes while others do not. Further, the x-height differs from letter to letter. Letters that look alike, such as “v”, “w”, and “y” have different heights giving them distinct identities.
The serifs are also manipulated (Gray). They can make the letters harder to read for dyslexics as they can obscure the shape of each letter, so the Dyslexie discarded almost all serifs; at the same time serifs stayed in the letters like “u” and “n” with differed length of the stroke in order to make those similar letters distinguishable.
Lastly, Boer made the capital letters bolder in order to make them more stand out compared to lowercase letters (Gray).
I was astounded by the meticulous technicalities that went into the making of this font and was inspired by the good deed involved. According to the BBC, 10% to 20% of the population have some form of dyslexia and more than 700 million children and adults in the world are at risk of lifelong literacy and social exclusion as a result of the condition (Gray). If typeface such as Dyslexie can help that large chunk of the population, we could uncover new talents and perspectives so direly needed in the world.
However, I was disappointed to find that such effort might have been futile, as of yet. According to Dr. Guinevere Eden, a director of the Center for the Study of Learning (CSL) at Georgetown University, “dyslexia-friendly fonts”, although they have gathered considerable media coverage in recent years, are not founded on any scientific research (Eden). Dyslexie which was the result of a thesis project of the then graphic design graduate student Boer, although designed with features aiming to aid dyslexics, did not find itself on a scientific basis. On the contrary, there have been three sound, peer-reviewed scientific research on the subjects, done in 2016, 2017, and 2018, that all concluded that the Dyslexie or Open Dyslexic font “have no measurable benefits or deliver any reading gains” (Eden).
While it is disappointing to see that the project started off a good intention has indeed made no actual progress towards its goal, I think it teaches us two important lessons. First, peer-reviewed researches are important (and often depressing). Second, making something so ingrained in us in its usage such as font that we do not question ways in which, in its conditions of possibility, could be improved in an extremely helpful way, actually better is extremely difficult. Nonetheless, the effort should continue and it is indeed at least comforting to see such efforts being made.
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This is a topic that’s close to my heart… Many thanks! Where can I find the contact details for questions?