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Comment by Insanity | Hacker News Reader

Interesting choice of font. Does the font help with reading it to the dyslexic? For me it makes it actually harder.

(I get that all-caps might help, but that font?)

EDIT: Apart from that, it's a cool idea though

Are you sure that it's the font and not the clearly non-native English making it harder to parse? For me the font is ugly but still just as readable, whereas the hallmark signs of an ESL writer were definitely noticable.

Also the abysmally loose kerning and undifferentiated leading make everything run together into a scattered wall of text, which probably doesn't help.

I've put up a couple of PRs to fix some of the English and the line spacing. Preview here: https://rjmunro.github.io/osm-for-the-dyslexic.github.io/

I hope they merge them as it looks a lot better to my (admittedly non-dyslexic) eyes.

It's https://www.opendyslexic.org/

My sister has dyslexia and confirmed that it’s so much easier for her to read. Her face lit up with excitement the first time we saw it.

It must depend on the person because I don't find it helps at all. If anything, it's slightly harder to read.

Wow, for me it looks like the tops of many of the characters has been rubbed off. These 'fat-bottomed' fonts seem to be a common theme.

I do find it strange that a font designed for readability (such as Consolas -my fav for any text editor), isn't mentioned as a readable font for dyslexics (or why it isn't). Monospacing improves the readability of certain characters (i,l,t) words with this combination of characters (ill, lit, readability) often end up getting very compressed.

The font is OpenDyslexic, specifically "designed against some common symptoms of dyslexia."

https://www.opendyslexic.org

A small scientific study was done that concluded: "These results indicate there may be no benefit for translating print materials to this font."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5629233/

Sample size is 12 though, I wouldn't conclude anything.

Considering there's no evidence it does work, it is reasonable to make that our default assumption as that's the only data available at this time.

People have been shopping around these fonts for years, first paid, and now free but in both cases the claims that they help aren't supported. I'd be particularly interested to see their effectiveness Vs. a placebo.

Cases that claim they don't help are just as unsupported? Having the font as an option won't hurt anyone for sure.

> Cases that claim they don't help are just as unsupported?

Except there's a study looking at it, with 12 participants, that found it didn't help. That's the best data we have, and current data suggests it doesn't help.

If you can find a study about Dyslexic fonts which supports their usage that would be compelling. Until then, that's what we have.

No, current data suggests that we don't know.

Also, the study found that it didn't help the participants.

Only if you want to ignore the data we have available for no particular reason. I'd definitely call it a small study, but a small correctly conducted study still triumphs over assumptions or speculation.

You appeat to suffer from some sort of horror vacui: Why must we attempt to infer something from what-is-basically-nothing? Isn't it more honest to just stick with "we don't know" in the face of so little evidence?

It may hurt, by making companies who use this don't think that they've done enough and don't need to do anymore.

There is more evidence: https://s-e-o.org/which-font-is-best-for-dyslexic-users-the-...

Apparently there have been a few studies, and a thesis, investigating "dyslexic fonts", which found no real benefit. I can't find any evidence that OpenDyslexic and the like are helpful, meanwhile.

I work at a facility where there are many dyslexic people and I've done quite a bit of research, but have failed to find any really solid evidence that it really works. The people I work with seem fairly lack-lustre about it. I'd welcome any proper independent verification of its utility.

I'm non-dyslexic and I'd say the same. I think my brain switched to individual letter recognition instead of whole-word recognition which made it so much slower, maybe it just takes getting used to?

I've used that style of font for ny terminals for over a decade and it becomes very easy and quick to read.

Looking at 'normal' terminal fonts now is jarring, they seem so spindly and don't form 'word shapes' as readily.

the lack of line-spacing and long lines make it even worse.

Yep - the line height is too cramped. Also it is black on grey so the contrast is probably not as good as it could be? I note on the https://www.opendyslexic.org/ page that the line spacing is much larger and they use what appears to me to be higher-contrast colours.

I am allegedly dyslexic (still not sure if the school just labelled me as that since I had some trouble spelling as a 5 year old, of if I really am dyslexic) and that page is a nightmare to read. It genuinely makes my eyes hurt to try and read that combination of font and spacing - I dont want to criticise like this, but unfortunately its tough for me to look at that and read it.

I'd recommend improving things by:

- try changing the background to white, and change the foreground to a dark-grey (not 100% black).

- use large line-spacing and padding to break things out a bit to make it easier on the eye.

- As well as an option of being all-caps or not, offer sans and serif font options.

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