My 11 year old daughter uses the open dyslexic font in her kindle. She has dyslexia, and also had to do some vision therapy when she was younger. She thinks she is able to read for longer with fewer headaches. She specifically has trouble tracking line to line.
She finds it very challenging to read her school textbooks, which are provided online on her Chromebook with a bad screen. I bought her paper versions of the same books.
I don’t have dyslexia, that I’m aware of, but have always had trouble tracking line to line, and end up having to reread a lot. I do have AuDHD, so that’s probably part of it. During the pandemic I took a course to improve my reading speed as something to do. One of the techniques was to use a tracer, either a finger or pen, to keep track of where you’re at and move it at the pace of the reading. As a kid I always thought kids who did this were worse at reading, so I never wanted to do it, but is immensely helpful and probably had the biggest impact of all the techniques when it came to improving my reading. I also found that one of the reasons I got distracted and bored while reading was how slow I was. As I sped up, I was able to better engage with a story (for fiction reading).
This was taught by default in my elementary school. I found it frustrating, though, because I don't actually read a word at a time. I've always processed blocks of text, a few lines together. I can read one word at a time if someone needs me to for some reason, but I don't do it by default.
When I was young, I thought it was so strange that they would slow people down like this. It wasn't until I was much older that I realized the way my brain flipped the "on" switch for reading was different from how most people read.
I'll take in several words at a time, but the finger/pen help my eyes stay on course and the pace I move my hand helps keeps the speed where I want it. It generally isn't hitting every word, sometimes just moving down the page, or back and forth in the center 60% of the page. This is in contrast to someone who is just learning who may point at each word while they sound it out.
One of the things talked about in a lot of speed reading circles is subvocalization, and not doing it. I assume if you're taking in several lines at a time you're not reading to yourself in your head and just seeing the words and understand them. I've tried this, but find it difficult and feel like my comprehension goes down. It also takes a lot of effort to actively change how my brain handles processing text, so I get tired of it rather quickly.
Yeah, my reading story is apparently really odd. Didn't realize that until I was much older.
My mom read to me a lot when I was really little, pointing at the words as she read them, and as she tells it, one day when I was 3 I just told her it was my turn and I read books to her. She figured maybe I'd memorized a couple favorites, but on our next trip to the library, she found out some switch had flipped in my head and I was now "a reader."
Neither of my parents had younger siblings or cousins around and I was their first, and apparently they didn't remember their own childhood reading learning very well, so, "Oh, I guess she reads now," was as far as they looked into it until my preschool teachers were very surprised when I started the next year.
I don't really have any explanation for it other than "when I see words, I know what they mean," so unfortunately I don't think it's particularly helpful or generalizable. Just a quirk I guess.
I don't have dyslexia, but I find it much, much more difficult to read on a screen. I think it's partly the eye strain, and partly the opportunity cost of "this device could be doing something more exciting right now".
That is due most likely because you are using bad screens and/or bad fonts.
Any computer monitor with a resolution less than 4k renders text with a much worse quality than printed paper. Smaller resolutions may be perfectly adequate for movies and games, but they are not good enough for reading long texts, e.g. books.
Something like a 27 inch or 32 inch 4k monitor is acceptable for reading text. It is still not quite as good as printed paper, but the price of better monitors increases very quickly. At such sizes a 5k monitor would be needed for good text rendering, but those are much more expensive.
You normally sit at a longer distance from a monitor than from a book, so the dot-per-inch resolution of the monitor should be configured so that a page of text should have greater dimensions on the screen than when printed. For instance, for my 27 inch 4k monitor I configure a 216 dots-per-inch value, which results in an on-screen size about 4/3 bigger than on paper, e.g. for an A4 page. I also do not use the default OS fonts, but I replace them with better fonts. Some bad graphic environments may provide no access or only a hidden access to configuring directly the DPI value of the monitor, which is the right way for scaling what is displayed, and they provide only settings that may result in low-quality text rendering, e.g. a multiplier for the size of the fonts or of the windows.
With a good monitor and with well-configured appearance settings in the OS, I prefer very much to read books on the computer display, instead from physical books.
I prefer to read on screen if it can set to “night mode” (white-on-black), large font, and full screen. For one, I find it’s more ergonomic to look at a well-positioned monitor than bending my neck to read a book.
I don't think you mean "monospaced". Monospaced fonts (where every character cell has the same width, like an old typewriter) are almost never used for normal text in Latin scripts.
I don't have dyslexia, but I think reading apps could help with all this stuff, and it would help others too.
Basically allowing advanced typography could help so many people with visual problems.
for example, allow adjustment of:
- spacing between characters
- spacing between words
- spacing between lines (giant spaces might help you)
- sizes of margins/gutters (whitespace that defines column width/height)
- more character color and background choices (night mode helps me)
- your own fonts
When amazon stopped allowing download of kindle books, I couldn't convert to epub and my reading took a nosedive. I use the kindle app for reading now and it is very limited in adjustability which makes reading harder for me.
I used my son's HP Chromebook for about a year as a third device, and the screen was indeed pretty bad for reading.
Tuning brightness, colors and bumping font sizes helped; but at the end of the day it's a very low DPI screen and intricate letter shapes are that more blurry at the sizes that were easier for me to read.
I have no trouble reading all day on a Surface Pro, for comparison.
I could not figure out a way to extract a pdf of the textbook to send to her kindle. I would have liked that solution, since she has one of the large format kindles.
I used to have PDFs on my Kindle, you used to be able to email them to your Kindle, I think Amazon killed that functionality, I believe you can plug it to your computer and mount it and drop in the PDFs but I don't know if it needs to be in a specific directory, just be weary of image heavy PDFs they may not load at all.
I do know how to load arbitrary PDFs onto the kindle, you can do it now with a specific email address that's assigned to each kindle. It's allow-listed for coming from your amazon email address though.
I was not able to extract the PDF from the online textbook. I think I had something that would have worked to just get the content, but I'd have had to stitch all the chapters back together, and if the page numbers didn't match the original book it would have been a hassle for my daughter.
This might be anecdotal evidence. But seeing this is really jarring, as I find the Dyslexia font actually easier to read. My girlfriend actually has dyslexia and also finds it easier to read. (maybe it is just more comfortable to read, not necessarily faster? Same with dvorak vs qwerty)
There are more and more cases where my personal experience seems to contradict with science. And I am not sure what to make of that.
> maybe it is just more comfortable to read, not necessarily faster?
The article says that participants in the studies preferred the traditional fonts over the dyslexia fonts. I would argue that this contradicts the thesis that they would be more comfortable to read. Moreover, the way I read the article, it wasn't just reading speed but accuracy that was tested as well.
> There are more and more cases where my personal experience seems to contradict with science. And I am not sure what to make of that.
I find that I often have to question my preconceptions when I encounter this issue. In other words, I have invested e.g. time, effort and thought into something which I thought works and it is difficult to not fall into a kind of sunken cost fallacy, i.e. my brain doesn't want me to believe it does not work, because I have invested effort into it.
I only looked at the study about the open/free font. Two things I noticed were that the experiment design seemed to use lists of words, instead of reading in sentences or paragraphs, and that the base performance of (for example the correct letter rate) the traditional fonts were also very high (basically already 100%).
It's possible that the test used does not generalize to other reading contexts and populations.
I expect familiarity would be a big confounder either way? The first time you see the new font it might be harder than something like times new Roman if you've seen that thousands of times and gotten used to its hinting
When people talk about “dyslexic fonts”, they’re usually referring to two main players: Dyslexie (the original, proprietary font) and OpenDyslexic (its open-source cousin). We haven’t conducted a statistically representative study focused solely on dyslexic or neurodivergent users to test these fonts in isolation. However, across years of real-world user testing with diverse cohorts, one pattern has been remarkably consistent: we’ve never observed a single person choose a dyslexic font as their preference when it’s available, nor express a desire for it.
Kuster et al. (2018) — Dyslexie font does not improve reading performance
Journal of Learning Disabilities.
International Dyslexia Association (IDA) — Dyslexia Basics & Reading Interventions
https://dyslexiaida.org
At face value, the idea of a dyslexic font makes sense. Dyslexia was long (and incorrectly) framed as a problem of letter flipping and visual confusion, so the logic followed that heavier, more distinctive, or asymmetrical letterforms might reduce perceptual errors. But modern research paints a different picture. Studies have found that the Dyslexie font did not improve reading speed, accuracy, or comprehension compared to standard fonts (1), while broader research synthesised by the International Dyslexia Association makes clear that the primary challenges in dyslexia lie in phonological decoding and language processing, not simply confusing a b for a d [2]. Changing letter shapes alone doesn’t meaningfully address how the brain processes written language.
That doesn’t make these fonts useless. Some individuals genuinely prefer them, and personal preference matters. They’ve also been valuable in prompting conversations about dyslexia, readability, and inclusive design, which is undeniably a good thing. But when dyslexic fonts are positioned in sales decks as a meaningful accessibility intervention, scepticism is warranted. If you’re serious about investing time and money in accessibility, the evidence consistently suggests that effort is far better spent on content clarity, spacing, layout, plain language, and overall usability than on a font that promises far more than it can deliver.
In short: an interesting conversation starter, but if someone’s selling it as a silver bullet, there’s a strong chance you’re being sold snake oil.
I am diagnosed with dyslexia. I was learning to read before computer displays where a thing. I tried dyslexia fonts on my kindle and also on my computer. I have not found these font to be more readable. I have problems following the line of letters with and without the fonts. Perhaps there are different types of dyslexia all called the same but with different problems. Sorry for my English , I’m not a native speaker
Since dyslexia exists on a spectrum, it's not surprising that no single dyslexia font shows consistent benefits in controlled studies. Fonts may still affect comfort or personal preference for some individuals, which isn't the same as consistent gains.
> Since dyslexia exists on a spectrum, it's not surprising that no single dyslexia font shows consistent benefits in controlled studies.
This makes no sense. A spectrum would involve everyone having the same problem to different degrees; anything that addressed that problem would consistently show an effect.
> "A spectrum would involve everyone having the same problem to different degrees;"
I learned the opposite, that the term spectrum is used when it is not same problem to different degrees. That's how the autism spectrum was explained to me, because the problem differs over the spectrum. In opposition to "level" or "gradient", which is intended to be something more linear over the same dimension.
I believe this redefinition of the term comes from how a "rainbow spectrum" is perceived, as different colors (and not as it is defined, as a linear degree of wavelength)
> I learned the opposite, that the term spectrum is used when it is not same problem to different degrees. That's how the autism spectrum was explained to me, because the problem differs over the spectrum.
The autism spectrum, in specific, was unified from what had been listed as separate disorders. That was done because the view was reached that these disorders reflected different degrees of the same underlying problem.
> That was done because the view was reached that these disorders reflected different degrees of the same underlying problem.
No, precisely the opposite. They weren't different degrees of the same underlying problem, they were a few different combinations of symptoms from a few different symptom categories: social, communication, and repetitive behaviors.
Something being a spectrum is not just a matter of intensity on a single axis ("more or less autistic"). Imagine a graph of the visible light spectrum, wavelengths map to symptoms and their intensities map to symptom severities.
ASD is a spectrum because different individuals have different levels of impairment in each area.
Consider this: Why is ASD a spectrum disorder and social anxiety isn't? Surely you don't believe that anxiety only comes in a single level of severity.
It’s a neurological problem where people essentially have difficulty mapping written material to sounds.
That’s difficult to measure objectively. Many schools lack the specialists who can spot this, and when they do, Teachers try different adaptations that help kids, so you’re going to have varying results based on the adaptations the person understands.
I have something called APD (auditory processing disorder) which essentially means that the areas of my brain that listen to speech, especially higher pitched female speech aren’t fully developed — I had chronic ear infections and my heading was negatively impacted. I adapted well, although with undiagnosed ADHD. Others do not for a variety of reasons.
You might enjoy the fact that some experts call it the "fruit salad of autism/ADHD".
The say that spectrum is inaccurate and the fruit salad is a better name) analogy/description.
Like with fruit salad, you can serve it to a table of people and everyone will have fruit salad on their plate, but it will be randomly varied for all. Some will have a lot of one fruit and a few others. Some will have all but one and so on.
I would also say that dyslexia isn't a single general condition. But in general group of issues that affect textual communication. Person could for example have certain repeating type of issues while writing, but still be able to read well and without issues. This is also a type of dyslexia.
So, spectral (as in fuzzy bands of clumped outputs that may overlap, but may have gaps, and may in some cases be less fuzzy), but not a spectrum (a continuous, fairly smoothly distributed shape over a wide range).
No, not in practise. Its hard to controll for something that isn't understood enough. You would have to have a good ekough sampling across the groups, and esch group would have to be big enough.
As a non dyslexic I find these fonts "easier" on the eye when reading for longer periods of time despite not liking them aesthetically (I don't hate them either). However, I am in my 40s and my eyes are starting to fail me, I may need an eye prescription but can still read without glasses.
Look into Atkinson Hyper Ledgible. I basically force its use everywhere these days. It’s hard to put my finger on why, but it’s just, well, super legible.
> "Contrary to popular belief, the core problem in dyslexia is not reversing letters (although it can be an indicator),” she writes. The difficulty lies in identifying the discrete units of sound that make up words and “matching those individual sounds to the letters and combinations of letters in order to read and spell.”
The more I hear about dyslexia the more it sounds like the result of not being taught to read properly rather than any kind of neurological issue.
Not sure I agree? I made some famously (in my family) weird mistakes in writing when I was young. They were obvious dyslectic issues. Mostly that changed because I haven't shown any traits for years in reading & writing. I had an amazing teacher for reading (my mom, who was a teacher).
OTOH while I was educated in music for a long time, I have some kind of problem reading music that disappears when it's projected on a big screen. Yes, I have corrected vision. If I had been smarter I would have just memorized everything I played, which is what I have to do now because projecting music isn't too practical ATM.
So while I think for some people it's intrinsic, I think you're onto something. Never actually considered it as a cause.
“Contrary to popular belief, the core problem in dyslexia is not reversing letters (although it can be an indicator),”
I always assumed the visual processing limitations were part of the issue with the reversal/transcription problem. A sort of neurological sequencing disorder swapping out the correct visual sense with a mistake. Xerox style. One that the dyslexic font wouldn't help with.
If that's apparently not dyslexia, or part of their spectrum, what is it if it is a processing disorder that remains into adulthood?
They come across rather dismissively when their own links, as far as I clicked at least, were less firm. I do appreciate that visual aids hawked to parents are not going to help for this issue either. I would like a name for the thing which is so importantly not Dislexia.
Dislexia is a difficulty learning to read. It is a symptom, not an underlying condition. There are different underlying conditions which lead to different processing issues, which in turn lead to dislexia. So you're almost always going to be wrong when you say "dislexia is..."
Please please please, if you have young kids learning to read or who will need to soon, educate yourself by listening to the "Sold a Story" podcast from NPR (it's on Spotify and other places).
There is so much bullshit out there about how kids should be taught to read, and too many schools unfortunately still use wrong methods disproven by science.
What works is phonics, old, tried and true. If your school isn't teaching it, you need to do it yourself at home or your kids risk never being good readers.
Once I got a Kindle I fooled around with settings and tried out all the fonts. Was surprised that there was one that was not "annoying" and let me read faster.
Fast forward a few years and I've had my eyes checked and found that I have mild astigmatism (0.25 left and 0.5 right).
Now I have a font that I can still read without glasses (but mostly in bed and with slightly larger text).
Dyslexia is just the overall name for a learning disability that causes difficulty with reading or writing. There is no unified cause or group of causes, it's all based on symptoms.
Therefore, the only things that will "work" for all dyslexics are things that fundamentally make reading and writing easier for everyone and not just dyslexics. So something like a font can help in the same way some fonts are easier to read than others, but the idea of a "dyslexia font" is a little silly.
I had read in the past about these fonts being mostly snake oil, and how studies showed that simply having large text showed more benefits than the dyslexic fonts. Based on this article, it sounds like that’s due to large fonts being easier to read for everyone.
I have dyslexia, and perhaps its because I developed a lot of mechanics to handle it, I don't find the font useful, it doesn't resolve any of the issues I have, and I find Console fonts more appealing.
My 11 year old daughter uses the open dyslexic font in her kindle. She has dyslexia, and also had to do some vision therapy when she was younger. She thinks she is able to read for longer with fewer headaches. She specifically has trouble tracking line to line.
She finds it very challenging to read her school textbooks, which are provided online on her Chromebook with a bad screen. I bought her paper versions of the same books.
I don’t have dyslexia, that I’m aware of, but have always had trouble tracking line to line, and end up having to reread a lot. I do have AuDHD, so that’s probably part of it. During the pandemic I took a course to improve my reading speed as something to do. One of the techniques was to use a tracer, either a finger or pen, to keep track of where you’re at and move it at the pace of the reading. As a kid I always thought kids who did this were worse at reading, so I never wanted to do it, but is immensely helpful and probably had the biggest impact of all the techniques when it came to improving my reading. I also found that one of the reasons I got distracted and bored while reading was how slow I was. As I sped up, I was able to better engage with a story (for fiction reading).
This was taught by default in my elementary school. I found it frustrating, though, because I don't actually read a word at a time. I've always processed blocks of text, a few lines together. I can read one word at a time if someone needs me to for some reason, but I don't do it by default.
When I was young, I thought it was so strange that they would slow people down like this. It wasn't until I was much older that I realized the way my brain flipped the "on" switch for reading was different from how most people read.
I'll take in several words at a time, but the finger/pen help my eyes stay on course and the pace I move my hand helps keeps the speed where I want it. It generally isn't hitting every word, sometimes just moving down the page, or back and forth in the center 60% of the page. This is in contrast to someone who is just learning who may point at each word while they sound it out.
One of the things talked about in a lot of speed reading circles is subvocalization, and not doing it. I assume if you're taking in several lines at a time you're not reading to yourself in your head and just seeing the words and understand them. I've tried this, but find it difficult and feel like my comprehension goes down. It also takes a lot of effort to actively change how my brain handles processing text, so I get tired of it rather quickly.
Yeah, my reading story is apparently really odd. Didn't realize that until I was much older.
My mom read to me a lot when I was really little, pointing at the words as she read them, and as she tells it, one day when I was 3 I just told her it was my turn and I read books to her. She figured maybe I'd memorized a couple favorites, but on our next trip to the library, she found out some switch had flipped in my head and I was now "a reader."
Neither of my parents had younger siblings or cousins around and I was their first, and apparently they didn't remember their own childhood reading learning very well, so, "Oh, I guess she reads now," was as far as they looked into it until my preschool teachers were very surprised when I started the next year.
I don't really have any explanation for it other than "when I see words, I know what they mean," so unfortunately I don't think it's particularly helpful or generalizable. Just a quirk I guess.
I don't have dyslexia, but I find it much, much more difficult to read on a screen. I think it's partly the eye strain, and partly the opportunity cost of "this device could be doing something more exciting right now".
That is due most likely because you are using bad screens and/or bad fonts.
Any computer monitor with a resolution less than 4k renders text with a much worse quality than printed paper. Smaller resolutions may be perfectly adequate for movies and games, but they are not good enough for reading long texts, e.g. books.
Something like a 27 inch or 32 inch 4k monitor is acceptable for reading text. It is still not quite as good as printed paper, but the price of better monitors increases very quickly. At such sizes a 5k monitor would be needed for good text rendering, but those are much more expensive.
You normally sit at a longer distance from a monitor than from a book, so the dot-per-inch resolution of the monitor should be configured so that a page of text should have greater dimensions on the screen than when printed. For instance, for my 27 inch 4k monitor I configure a 216 dots-per-inch value, which results in an on-screen size about 4/3 bigger than on paper, e.g. for an A4 page. I also do not use the default OS fonts, but I replace them with better fonts. Some bad graphic environments may provide no access or only a hidden access to configuring directly the DPI value of the monitor, which is the right way for scaling what is displayed, and they provide only settings that may result in low-quality text rendering, e.g. a multiplier for the size of the fonts or of the windows.
With a good monitor and with well-configured appearance settings in the OS, I prefer very much to read books on the computer display, instead from physical books.
I prefer to read on screen if it can set to “night mode” (white-on-black), large font, and full screen. For one, I find it’s more ergonomic to look at a well-positioned monitor than bending my neck to read a book.
I believe (no evidence) that printed text is easier to read because of the mono spaced serif fonts used.
The serifs are visual cue to lead the eyes onto the next letter or word.
I don't think you mean "monospaced". Monospaced fonts (where every character cell has the same width, like an old typewriter) are almost never used for normal text in Latin scripts.
Thanks for the correction. I was thinking of proportional spacing.
I don't have dyslexia, but I think reading apps could help with all this stuff, and it would help others too.
Basically allowing advanced typography could help so many people with visual problems.
for example, allow adjustment of:
- spacing between characters
- spacing between words
- spacing between lines (giant spaces might help you)
- sizes of margins/gutters (whitespace that defines column width/height)
- more character color and background choices (night mode helps me)
- your own fonts
When amazon stopped allowing download of kindle books, I couldn't convert to epub and my reading took a nosedive. I use the kindle app for reading now and it is very limited in adjustability which makes reading harder for me.
> I bought her paper versions of the same books.
Then e-ink screen would provide the same benefits ie: contrast.
Definition could be a bigger thing.
I used my son's HP Chromebook for about a year as a third device, and the screen was indeed pretty bad for reading.
Tuning brightness, colors and bumping font sizes helped; but at the end of the day it's a very low DPI screen and intricate letter shapes are that more blurry at the sizes that were easier for me to read.
I have no trouble reading all day on a Surface Pro, for comparison.
I could not figure out a way to extract a pdf of the textbook to send to her kindle. I would have liked that solution, since she has one of the large format kindles.
I used to have PDFs on my Kindle, you used to be able to email them to your Kindle, I think Amazon killed that functionality, I believe you can plug it to your computer and mount it and drop in the PDFs but I don't know if it needs to be in a specific directory, just be weary of image heavy PDFs they may not load at all.
I do know how to load arbitrary PDFs onto the kindle, you can do it now with a specific email address that's assigned to each kindle. It's allow-listed for coming from your amazon email address though.
I was not able to extract the PDF from the online textbook. I think I had something that would have worked to just get the content, but I'd have had to stitch all the chapters back together, and if the page numbers didn't match the original book it would have been a hassle for my daughter.
This might be anecdotal evidence. But seeing this is really jarring, as I find the Dyslexia font actually easier to read. My girlfriend actually has dyslexia and also finds it easier to read. (maybe it is just more comfortable to read, not necessarily faster? Same with dvorak vs qwerty)
There are more and more cases where my personal experience seems to contradict with science. And I am not sure what to make of that.
> maybe it is just more comfortable to read, not necessarily faster?
The article says that participants in the studies preferred the traditional fonts over the dyslexia fonts. I would argue that this contradicts the thesis that they would be more comfortable to read. Moreover, the way I read the article, it wasn't just reading speed but accuracy that was tested as well.
> There are more and more cases where my personal experience seems to contradict with science. And I am not sure what to make of that.
I find that I often have to question my preconceptions when I encounter this issue. In other words, I have invested e.g. time, effort and thought into something which I thought works and it is difficult to not fall into a kind of sunken cost fallacy, i.e. my brain doesn't want me to believe it does not work, because I have invested effort into it.
I only looked at the study about the open/free font. Two things I noticed were that the experiment design seemed to use lists of words, instead of reading in sentences or paragraphs, and that the base performance of (for example the correct letter rate) the traditional fonts were also very high (basically already 100%).
It's possible that the test used does not generalize to other reading contexts and populations.
I expect familiarity would be a big confounder either way? The first time you see the new font it might be harder than something like times new Roman if you've seen that thousands of times and gotten used to its hinting
When people talk about “dyslexic fonts”, they’re usually referring to two main players: Dyslexie (the original, proprietary font) and OpenDyslexic (its open-source cousin). We haven’t conducted a statistically representative study focused solely on dyslexic or neurodivergent users to test these fonts in isolation. However, across years of real-world user testing with diverse cohorts, one pattern has been remarkably consistent: we’ve never observed a single person choose a dyslexic font as their preference when it’s available, nor express a desire for it.
Kuster et al. (2018) — Dyslexie font does not improve reading performance Journal of Learning Disabilities.
International Dyslexia Association (IDA) — Dyslexia Basics & Reading Interventions https://dyslexiaida.org
At face value, the idea of a dyslexic font makes sense. Dyslexia was long (and incorrectly) framed as a problem of letter flipping and visual confusion, so the logic followed that heavier, more distinctive, or asymmetrical letterforms might reduce perceptual errors. But modern research paints a different picture. Studies have found that the Dyslexie font did not improve reading speed, accuracy, or comprehension compared to standard fonts (1), while broader research synthesised by the International Dyslexia Association makes clear that the primary challenges in dyslexia lie in phonological decoding and language processing, not simply confusing a b for a d [2]. Changing letter shapes alone doesn’t meaningfully address how the brain processes written language. That doesn’t make these fonts useless. Some individuals genuinely prefer them, and personal preference matters. They’ve also been valuable in prompting conversations about dyslexia, readability, and inclusive design, which is undeniably a good thing. But when dyslexic fonts are positioned in sales decks as a meaningful accessibility intervention, scepticism is warranted. If you’re serious about investing time and money in accessibility, the evidence consistently suggests that effort is far better spent on content clarity, spacing, layout, plain language, and overall usability than on a font that promises far more than it can deliver.
In short: an interesting conversation starter, but if someone’s selling it as a silver bullet, there’s a strong chance you’re being sold snake oil.
I am diagnosed with dyslexia. I was learning to read before computer displays where a thing. I tried dyslexia fonts on my kindle and also on my computer. I have not found these font to be more readable. I have problems following the line of letters with and without the fonts. Perhaps there are different types of dyslexia all called the same but with different problems. Sorry for my English , I’m not a native speaker
Since dyslexia exists on a spectrum, it's not surprising that no single dyslexia font shows consistent benefits in controlled studies. Fonts may still affect comfort or personal preference for some individuals, which isn't the same as consistent gains.
> Since dyslexia exists on a spectrum, it's not surprising that no single dyslexia font shows consistent benefits in controlled studies.
This makes no sense. A spectrum would involve everyone having the same problem to different degrees; anything that addressed that problem would consistently show an effect.
> "A spectrum would involve everyone having the same problem to different degrees;"
I learned the opposite, that the term spectrum is used when it is not same problem to different degrees. That's how the autism spectrum was explained to me, because the problem differs over the spectrum. In opposition to "level" or "gradient", which is intended to be something more linear over the same dimension.
I believe this redefinition of the term comes from how a "rainbow spectrum" is perceived, as different colors (and not as it is defined, as a linear degree of wavelength)
> I learned the opposite, that the term spectrum is used when it is not same problem to different degrees. That's how the autism spectrum was explained to me, because the problem differs over the spectrum.
The autism spectrum, in specific, was unified from what had been listed as separate disorders. That was done because the view was reached that these disorders reflected different degrees of the same underlying problem.
> That was done because the view was reached that these disorders reflected different degrees of the same underlying problem.
No, precisely the opposite. They weren't different degrees of the same underlying problem, they were a few different combinations of symptoms from a few different symptom categories: social, communication, and repetitive behaviors.
Something being a spectrum is not just a matter of intensity on a single axis ("more or less autistic"). Imagine a graph of the visible light spectrum, wavelengths map to symptoms and their intensities map to symptom severities.
ASD is a spectrum because different individuals have different levels of impairment in each area.
Consider this: Why is ASD a spectrum disorder and social anxiety isn't? Surely you don't believe that anxiety only comes in a single level of severity.
It’s a neurological problem where people essentially have difficulty mapping written material to sounds.
That’s difficult to measure objectively. Many schools lack the specialists who can spot this, and when they do, Teachers try different adaptations that help kids, so you’re going to have varying results based on the adaptations the person understands.
I have something called APD (auditory processing disorder) which essentially means that the areas of my brain that listen to speech, especially higher pitched female speech aren’t fully developed — I had chronic ear infections and my heading was negatively impacted. I adapted well, although with undiagnosed ADHD. Others do not for a variety of reasons.
2d spectrums exist. autism being one example where it’s both sensory under / overstimulation and repetitive activity preference / avoidance.
I suspect that autism is more a cluster of conditions than a single line. I may be wrong.
There is a fashion for calling everything a spectrum. Maybe "range" would be a better term for a linear progression.
In my experience, so is dyslexia
FWIW some face blindness is common in autism, and I suspect this is somehow related to dyslexia.
That's interesting. I know someone who's dyslexic, highly educated (grad school), not autistic, and has some level of face blindness.
yeah this was more my point. even eyesight deficiencies are 2d.
yeah. autism is a bunch of 3d clustering things for sure. any single dimension of autism can be sliced 2d imo.
Spectrum is probably the wrong term. IMO it's probably a bunch of different underlying issues that sometimes occur together.
So something may help type 1 dyslexia, but not help type 2 or type 3 etc.
You might enjoy the fact that some experts call it the "fruit salad of autism/ADHD".
The say that spectrum is inaccurate and the fruit salad is a better name) analogy/description.
Like with fruit salad, you can serve it to a table of people and everyone will have fruit salad on their plate, but it will be randomly varied for all. Some will have a lot of one fruit and a few others. Some will have all but one and so on.
I would also say that dyslexia isn't a single general condition. But in general group of issues that affect textual communication. Person could for example have certain repeating type of issues while writing, but still be able to read well and without issues. This is also a type of dyslexia.
So, spectral (as in fuzzy bands of clumped outputs that may overlap, but may have gaps, and may in some cases be less fuzzy), but not a spectrum (a continuous, fairly smoothly distributed shape over a wide range).
That would also show consistent benefits in controlled studies.
No, not in practise. Its hard to controll for something that isn't understood enough. You would have to have a good ekough sampling across the groups, and esch group would have to be big enough.
I have dyslexia, and I hate them. It makes me read slower and not better.
I do have two friends who like it. Maybe it's subjective?
Either way, I'm very happy people put effort in developing reading aids like this.
As a non dyslexic I find these fonts "easier" on the eye when reading for longer periods of time despite not liking them aesthetically (I don't hate them either). However, I am in my 40s and my eyes are starting to fail me, I may need an eye prescription but can still read without glasses.
Look into Atkinson Hyper Ledgible. I basically force its use everywhere these days. It’s hard to put my finger on why, but it’s just, well, super legible.
https://www.brailleinstitute.org/freefont/
It does all that while still looking like a normal, attractive font too.
The reverse slash of the 0 looks strange, which might have done to elminate a possible confusion with Norwegian ø.
Also differentiates from %.
> "Contrary to popular belief, the core problem in dyslexia is not reversing letters (although it can be an indicator),” she writes. The difficulty lies in identifying the discrete units of sound that make up words and “matching those individual sounds to the letters and combinations of letters in order to read and spell.”
The more I hear about dyslexia the more it sounds like the result of not being taught to read properly rather than any kind of neurological issue.
Well it is largely genetic, but it could still be behaviourally linked for sure.
As i see it the fundamental issue in dyslexia has to do with tokenization and embedding.
The dyslexic brain uses a embedding space that is not very fit for purpose.
Some stuff that is dissimilar get embedded close to each other and some things that should be far from each other gets embedded close to each other.
Downstream networks that try to use these embeddings has a hard time trying to counteract the bad embeddings. The final result is a dyslexic person.
Not sure I agree? I made some famously (in my family) weird mistakes in writing when I was young. They were obvious dyslectic issues. Mostly that changed because I haven't shown any traits for years in reading & writing. I had an amazing teacher for reading (my mom, who was a teacher).
OTOH while I was educated in music for a long time, I have some kind of problem reading music that disappears when it's projected on a big screen. Yes, I have corrected vision. If I had been smarter I would have just memorized everything I played, which is what I have to do now because projecting music isn't too practical ATM.
So while I think for some people it's intrinsic, I think you're onto something. Never actually considered it as a cause.
Which led to it being misdiagnosed as a failure on the student's part, or of their past teachers.
Much as many autistic children having meltdowns are often viewed as being "ill-behaved", or that their parents don't discipline them enough/correctly.
“Contrary to popular belief, the core problem in dyslexia is not reversing letters (although it can be an indicator),”
I always assumed the visual processing limitations were part of the issue with the reversal/transcription problem. A sort of neurological sequencing disorder swapping out the correct visual sense with a mistake. Xerox style. One that the dyslexic font wouldn't help with.
If that's apparently not dyslexia, or part of their spectrum, what is it if it is a processing disorder that remains into adulthood?
They come across rather dismissively when their own links, as far as I clicked at least, were less firm. I do appreciate that visual aids hawked to parents are not going to help for this issue either. I would like a name for the thing which is so importantly not Dislexia.
> If that's apparently not Dislexia
Dislexia is a difficulty learning to read. It is a symptom, not an underlying condition. There are different underlying conditions which lead to different processing issues, which in turn lead to dislexia. So you're almost always going to be wrong when you say "dislexia is..."
Why would you quote the parent's correct spelling of "dyslexia" as if he'd misspelled it?
And why are you also misspelling it?
And why did you capitalize it within the quote (despite that being another misquote), even though you don't capitalize it within your own comment?
It was quoted correctly. I wasn't quick enough to fix it before the reply.
> And why are you also misspelling it?
criticizing misspelling in a thread about people with language difficulties...
The post was obviously edited between when it was quoted and when you saw it and made this post.
Please please please, if you have young kids learning to read or who will need to soon, educate yourself by listening to the "Sold a Story" podcast from NPR (it's on Spotify and other places).
There is so much bullshit out there about how kids should be taught to read, and too many schools unfortunately still use wrong methods disproven by science.
What works is phonics, old, tried and true. If your school isn't teaching it, you need to do it yourself at home or your kids risk never being good readers.
I did not know about phonics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonics
English is my second language. I found writing and pronunciation disconnected and learned two separate languages.
As they said, English is a pictographic language with 26 radicals https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/pronounce
Once I got a Kindle I fooled around with settings and tried out all the fonts. Was surprised that there was one that was not "annoying" and let me read faster.
Fast forward a few years and I've had my eyes checked and found that I have mild astigmatism (0.25 left and 0.5 right).
Now I have a font that I can still read without glasses (but mostly in bed and with slightly larger text).
Dyslexia is just the overall name for a learning disability that causes difficulty with reading or writing. There is no unified cause or group of causes, it's all based on symptoms.
Therefore, the only things that will "work" for all dyslexics are things that fundamentally make reading and writing easier for everyone and not just dyslexics. So something like a font can help in the same way some fonts are easier to read than others, but the idea of a "dyslexia font" is a little silly.
I had read in the past about these fonts being mostly snake oil, and how studies showed that simply having large text showed more benefits than the dyslexic fonts. Based on this article, it sounds like that’s due to large fonts being easier to read for everyone.
I have dyslexia, and perhaps its because I developed a lot of mechanics to handle it, I don't find the font useful, it doesn't resolve any of the issues I have, and I find Console fonts more appealing.
I have a dyslexic friend who made leaps and bounds progress when given a paperwhite with dyslexic font. They were giddy the first time they saw it.
So, I'm a believer
They don't. You wanna know what really really works? Not overriding my preferred font and colors scheme.
> For better reading outcomes, font size should be between 12 and 14 points
i've read that comic sans actually beats out most dyslexia fonts