[games_access] Fw: Does This Font Truly Help Dyslexic Readers to Read? (Barrie Ellis)

[Ian Hamilton]

It has been around for a while, haven't seen any studies on it but it's a solid enough principle, reducing symmetry, the whole weighted thing is an interesting idea too. Weight aside it's not the best, it lacks the things that dyslexia / early reading typefaces normally have, like extended ascenders and descenders and complete lack of symmetry (in this font the b and d are mirrored), and it's far from the most friendly font to read either.

There are some great easily readable typefaces that (a rarity in type-land) were actually developed in conjunction with the target audience, such as FS-Mencap and Sassoon. They are sometimes used for swapping, gov.UK is really up on cognitive impairment and has done a trial of allowing users to choose to use Sassoon if they prefer, although designed for children the principles it uses work for many people with reading issues.

I've used it on games for cog impaired young children, with good results, and it is used pretty much universally in schools throughout the UK. Many books are written using it.

Impaired reading ability is such a huge issue (15% of the UK / USA adult population has a reading age of below 11 years) that typography can be a really significant wide reaching accessibility improvement, not just type but things like line spacing, upper/lower case, characters per line, contrast and background.

Those comments on the article really are something else. To a certain extent it's to be expected, people are just told they are dyslexic as if it's a single condition, when in reality it is pretty broad and covers several distinct things, so different solutions work for different people.

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Subject: games_access Digest, Vol 105, Issue 9
Date: Thu, Oct 4, 2012 3:00 PM




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Today's Topics:

   1. Fw: Does This Font Truly Help Dyslexic Readers to Read?
      (Barrie Ellis)
   2. Fonts in games (Barrie Ellis)


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Message: 1
Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2012 08:45:55 +0100
From: "Barrie Ellis" <oneswitch at gmail.com>
Subject: [games_access] Fw: Does This Font Truly Help Dyslexic Readers
        to      Read?
To: <games_access at igda.org>
Message-ID: <10E162E24C1445ADAA8A274C6C5705EE at OneSwitchPC>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

This link is very interesting, and especially so the comments.....



From: Techni
Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2012 3:31 AM
To: Barrie Ellis
Subject: Does This Font Truly Help Dyslexic Readers to Read?


http://m.gizmodo.com/5948800/does-this-font-truly-help-dyslexic-readers-read

This is fricken amazing if it works. Devs need to let ppl swap fonts with this. Or build it into systems firmware so everygame supports it. Sony ignores anything i say but maybe if you guys lobby for it.
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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2012 09:42:57 +0100
From: "Barrie Ellis" <oneswitch at gmail.com>
Subject: [games_access] Fonts in games
To: <games_access at igda.org>
Message-ID: <1138BD827CF84400858864BEFD5B072B at OneSwitchPC>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

A bit more on the accessibility of fonts in games: http://switchgaming.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-accessibility-of-fonts-in-games.html
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