On of my fields of interest is typefaces. It comes from my dad working as a typesetter when I was a kid, and a general interest in design.
From a young age my dad always drilled into me a hatred of Comic Sans. I think of it in the same way a Liverpool fan would think of Manchester United. However, a lot of teachers use Comic Sans on their worksheets as a way of helping dyslexic learners. I’ve never found solid research to back this up, but the British Dyslexia Association do recommend it and I’m not going to argue with them.
Luckily for me and other Comic Sans haters there’s been a raft of fonts specifically designed to help dyslexic people read over the last few years that are even better.
Dyslexie was probably the first. It has completely different glyphs for each letter, using weighting at the bottom of the letter to avoid the letters being turned around in the readers head. For instance, the p and the d on this page are identical, but rotated. This is not the case with Dyslexie. Problem is, it’s £75 a year to use it. Have a look at the video below which does a good job of describing why Dyslexie is so great.
Don’t worry, though, as there’s a free alternative called Open Dyslexic that uses the same ideas. I’ve used it quite a lot, and it’s often quietly appreciated.
As always comments welcome. I love FONT TALK.