What Makes a Good Dyslexia Font?

What makes a good dyslexia font?

A dyslexia font is, as the name suggests, a font that makes text accessible for people with dyslexia. However, as educationalists began to realise in the 1980s when dyslexia began to be recognised as a learning difference (in those days it was termed a disability, but – hopefully – we know better now!), what works well for a brain that’s wired for dyslexia works well for everybody else as well. The same applies to a dyslexia font:  the main purpose of a font is to lead the brain to the content of a piece of text without its appearance being an obstacle. Except in the case of decorative fonts, the font isn’t there to draw attention to itself but to draw attention to the word for which it is the medium. For a dyslexic person, especially one with co-occurring visual difficulties (“visual stress”), where the actual representation and sequence of the letters in a word is in itself an obstacle to the understanding, this is of course particularly important.

However, most people do not realise that the reading experience of a neurotypical person reading a standard font can also be improved if a dyslexia font is used that meet certain criteria. Just as adults diagnosed with visual stress for the first time often say how they thought their discomfort and difficulty was true of everyone’s reading experience, and are astounded by the difference that reading through the right colour can make; it is also true that there is a hidden dimension of improved reading experience that can be accessed by the average neurotypical reader just by replacing their usual typeface – Arial, for example – with the right dyslexia font.

So what makes a good dyslexia font- in particular, one that does not shout ”accessibility” all over the page, but that can be used comfortably by everyone, on any document whether digital or printed, in any environment?

As I have already suggested, I think a major consideration is that it doesn’t look too out of the ordinary. In fact, it should “disappear” as much as possible rather than stand out. For reading to be quick, efficient, and comfortable, the font needs to minimize the effort needed to decipher the words so that “brain space” for understanding is maximized. The words need to sink in, rather than just pass in front of the eyes. There are three principles that can be applied to achieve this. First of all, a good dyslexia font needs to reduce pattern glare from black text on white background, and not use “Look out!” or “Looks at me!” features that excite the visual areas of the brain.

Secondly, each letter needs to be unique and easy to recognize. A b must not be a reversed d. A capital I must not look like a lower case l. A w must not be an upside down m; an n must not be a rotated u, etc. The brain can respond to quite subtle cues to differentiate between characters, but if they are not there reversals and other confusion can run riot for someone with dyslexia and visual difficulties. And finally, kerning (the spacing between letters) must be such that enough space is left between verticals (especially between I and l) to stop them running together without being so much that the eye’s saccades between the letters is interrupted or slowed down. The Aravis font, based on algorithms found in nature, was designed over five years to achieve these objectives. In addition, the font size and spacing are such that a paragraph in Aravis takes up roughly the same space on a page as say a paragraph in Arial or Calibri, so they can be substituted on most documents without having to make significant alterations to layout. And with 1500 glyphs for each of the six typefaces,  covering all 72 Latinate languages + Greek, Aravis is not just an alphabetic dyslexia font for the English-speaking dyslexic community, but it is a major contribution to international typography.

(Aravis is the Crossbow house font. You are reading it now. Click here or on any of the text links in this article to purchase it for yourself or your organization.)