http://www.dyslexic.com/fonts   -   dyslexic.com

Typefaces for Dyslexia

Dyslexia is a disability which is very sensitive to particular typefaces, both in print and on screen. We look at some of the typefaces we recommend to ensure that whatever materials you are creating, they are accessible to as broad an audience as possible.

Many dyslexic people find that the readability of a piece of text varies greatly depending upon the font (type face or type style) used. This article looks at some fonts that are recommended and used by dyslexic people. There is more information on the reading difficulties faced by dyslexic people and those with Meares/Irlen syndrome on our Visual Stress page.

A range of fonts are available at fonts.com

General Rules

Serif fonts, with their ‘ticks’ and ‘tails’ at the end of most strokes (as found in traditional print fonts such as Georgia or Times New Roman), tend to obscure the shapes of letters, so sans-serif fonts are generally preferred. Many dyslexic people also find it easier to read a font that looks similar to hand writing as they are familiar with this style, and some teachers prefer them. However these types of fonts can lead to confusion with some letter combinations, such as “oa” and “oo”; “rn” and “m”.

The size of the ascenders and descenders of letters (the ‘stems’ on letters like p and b) is also important as many dyslexic readers rely on recalling the visual shape of a word due to poor phonological awareness. If ascenders and descenders are too short the shape of the word is more difficult to identify and can make reading slower and less accurate.

Read Regular

Recently Natascha Frensch, a graphic designer at the Royal College of Art, has designed a font specifically for dyslexic readers, taking into account the issues discussed above. There are examples of Read Regular on her web site at www.readregular.com and the children’s publisher Chrysalis is now using it for two-thirds of the 150 children’s titles it brings out every year.

Lexia Readable

Has also been designed specifically for dyslexia and is actually available. You can download it from www.k-type.com/ free for individual use. It has developed quite a bit over the last few months, although it still has some minor irregularities. It tries to avoid some possible dyslexic confusions (eg b-d) by using different shapes, and is broadly based on Comic Sans, see below. Please let us know what you think of it.

Tiresias

Has been designed for Visual Impairment. Originally produced for subtitles and signs there is now a screen version Tiresias PC font. Tiresias is now free to download. It is good for legibility, but doesn’t address the issue of dyslexic confusions.

Sassoon

This font is often recommended for dyslexia, but was actually designed for early reading. Also, it is quite expensive and can be bought through Adrian Williams Design and elsewhere on the web. Letter shapes are similar to those that schools use to teach handwriting, and ascenders and descenders are exaggerated to emphasise word shapes.

Myriad Pro

A modern typeface designed by Adobe, we have begun to use Myriad Pro in our designed materials and in part on this dyslexic.com site. Myriad Pro has a clean sans serif aesthetic making it suitable for people with dyslexia.

Web fonts

A number of fonts have been commissioned by Microsoft with the aim of making on-screen reading easier and are included in many of their packages. Unfortunately, in our opinion some of these fonts are not really ideal for dyslexics – like many modern fonts they have large bodies and short descenders and ascenders, which makes the letters harder to tell apart. For example, Verdana is promoted by Microsoft as a very screen-friendly font and has therefore become popular with web designers, but the line spacing is very tight, reducing the size of the ascenders and descenders and the legibility for dyslexic readers. [Note: all the font illustrations are screen shots of that font as rendered by Internet Explorer in Windows with no font resizing.] On the other hand these fonts are very professionally worked, so they are as clear and clean as possible at all sizes and in all media.

Better is Trebuchet MS, which has short descenders but reasonably long ascenders, a small body size and generous line spacing. We find this font suits many readers and it is our first preference.

Other fonts

Although there are thousands of fonts freely available on the web, most of them are fancy display fonts totally unsuited for blocks of text. We are therefore currently obliged to fall back on the fonts distributed with Windows and Mac OS for our style sheet.

Our other two choices are Geneva for the Mac and Arial for older Windows systems.

Some dyslexic people find that Comic Sans is one of the more readable of the commonly-available Windows fonts, and we have used it on this web site in the past. Others find it too bold, too childish or too informal.

Making your printed text “dyslexia friendly”

Choose one of the recommended fonts above. Print at at least 12 points. Think about colour and coloured paper. Follow the advice in theBDA’s Dyslexia Friendly Style Guide, which we helped to write. And there is further information and links on our Accessibility page.


Article last updated: 8 September 2006.

Your comment:

Excellent article, clearly written, with excellent suggestions for typefaces and resources. I will be sending this to many of the parent listservs on which I participate. Thank you for the thorough work you have done.

Susan L. Blumberg, Ph.D. 20/9/2007