Dyslexie: A typeface for dyslexics
thenextweb.com
thenextweb.com
I can attest though that upon seeing the paragraph written at the end of the video that the text was much easier to read. I was really quite blown away with it. I'm all for this, and really hope it can get spread around.
I don't think you can make someone who is not a reader become one. But I think like anyone who can't do something by a limitation when it is removed you have a new found respect for what you didn't have. It may not be a big market, but trust me there is a market here.
I'm going to download all of these on every part of my system that I can tonight.
It seems like most of the changes were arbitrary (e.g. rotation, making the lower parts bolder) and designed to make two otherwise similar characters distinct. Wouldn't that require a learning period, to figure out which characters were changed in which ways? If you don't know (reflexively from memory) whether they rotated the `i` or the `j`, the rotation won't help anything.
As for my $.02, I think the mix-ups often occur in real-time due to proximity. Making the symbols distinct would perhaps lessen the likelihood that the brain will try to identify those conceptual objects as a unity when they are near one another.
What kind of experiment is that? If you want to know if it helps dyslexics, you don't change out the dyslexics... You change out the font!
It sounds like they either don't understand experimentation at all, or they borrowed someone else's results and tried to read things into them.
Edit: As noted below, they apparently actually did test whether dyslexics could read that font better or not. They just also happened to test normal people as well, to see if they were affected. The video confuses this.
Also you should note, that this font was created by a dyslexic, so I think he knows what he is doing.
However, I did find some ideas that I thought might be helpful. In particular, making each letter bottom-heavy and making each letter different than other letters, so that if you rotate them, they aren't identical.
Sadly, it appears that either doesn't work, or he didn't make drastic enough changes.
I actually like the look of the font, though, when it's large enough.
I could imagine that this works well for specific kinds of dyslexia.
I read the tables in the thesis. There are 12 comparations between the Arial and the Dyslexie fonts, but only 2 of then have p<.1 and none of them has p<.05. So it is very difficult to know if the differences between the fonts are real or come from random noise.
They made a font that they think is better for people with dyslexia, they tried it, but they found almost no difference. This work is only a master thesis, so perhaps they are planning to continue working on this. But for now it is not a "cure" for dyslexia.
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I think that the problem is that they didn’t do enough "beta"-testing. (Perhaps they did it, but it is not in the thesis.) With infinity time, money and resources, they should:
* Find a small group people with dyslexia.
* Do some A/B testing on them for one year. Compare two fonts with very little difference. For example in one font the dot of the i has the normal size and in the other font the dot is bigger.
* Perhaps, from time to time, change the group of people, to be sure that the font is good for "normal" people with dyslexia, not only for the trained group that is in the laboratory.
* Perhaps, from time to time, try some bigger changes, but measure the improvement.
* Find a new bigger group people with dyslexia.
* Compare with this people the difference between the original and the final font.
"many of the letters look similar – such as v/w, i/j and m/n – thus people with dyslexia often confuse these letters"
Dyslexic people usually don't confuse letters M and N, they confuse M and P. Notice how they don't relate in any sort of way. This shows how much of a brainfuck (no offense) it is to live with dyslexia, and how hard it is for non-dyslexic to understand the disability.
To make an object-oriented parallel, dyslexic people know very well the difference between two classes (concepts), but when seeing or creating instances (realisation), they can't seem to make heads or tails of which one belongs to which class. So the instances m of class M and p of class P will get processed as some mashup M/P. The only way out is to work around the mashup by tying M class and P class each to another unrelated concept, but related to the instances.
So as an example, the letter 'm' is linked to the word 'marmalade' (which is an instance of the concept of 'Marmalade') and p to the word peanut (itself an instance of Peanut). 'Marmalade' and 'Peanut' being hopefully[0] unrelated, the person can find a solution by linking concepts (not instances) 'M' to 'Marmalade' and 'P' to 'Peanut', so that when the person tries to process the word 'motor', instead of being faced with a dreadful (M/P).O.T.O.R. they will be able work around the issue by thinking (Marmalade).O.T.O.R.
I took the 'm' shape which is present in both 'marmalade' and 'motor' as a link vector, but really any vector will do, and people use an extremely diverse array of vectors and associations. One can end up linking 'm' to 'Green' just because for some reason seeing a 'm' makes him thing of the color (hence concept) 'Green' whereas 'p' will be tied to 'Red'. Being able to break the M/P mashup is the key, and whatever association will do, so it just happens that M/P+Green == M for someone.
[0] I said 'hopefully', because concepts of any level can result in a mashup. If for some reason the mashup Marmalade/Peanut exists, it will be of no help to map m to Marmalade.
SLTs actually use those associations to quickly and accurately diagnose dyslexia, so sorry, I have no reference to give to you. It may look like anecdotal evidence, but I get that straight from the horse's mouth.
Notably:
Students read the reading tests EMT and Klepel twice. Once printed in the font Arial and once in the font “Dyslexie”. The order was randomly assigned and in-between the reading tests an auditory task was fulfilled.
Thus, the study measured whether Dyslexie reads better than Arial. Maybe Georgia reads even better.
Unrelated to dyslexia, I noticed watching some old Mac world videos that Jobs used to use Comic Sans a lot.
1) Is it consistent? Do you have have trouble with the same letters/letter pairings? Or do different words tend to have different effects?
2) Normal readers tend to read the "word" and not the individual letters. Do/Can dyslexics do the same? As an example, if for instance dyslexics commonly were to transpose the "o" and "u" combination "ou" to "uo" I'm wondering if dyslexics read the jumbled "yuo" immediately as "you" or, does dyslexia prevent you from even recognizing the pattern and you have to laboriously read "y" "u" "o", transpose "o" and "u" and recognize "you".
The reason I ask is because I'm curious if such a typeface might actually be hurtful to dyslexic readers. While the typeface is easier to read for dyslexics I wonder if using such a type face for initial reading education would have a side effect. When the reader switches to non dyslexic type faces, %99.99 the rest of all digital type, they will have diminished capacity for reading those texts (more so than having learned to cope with the frequent errors of those type faces)?
In other words, might the best solution to be educating dyslexics by recognizing they may see different or multiple letter patterns for certain words and simply train them to recognize each possible version of those letter patterns?
IE. Here's a vocabulary sheet for Johny, a non dyslexic child:
"mouse" - a small four legged mammal.
"house" - a building you live in.
"mouse", "muose" - a small four legged mammal.
"house", "huose" - a building you live in.
A dyslexic does not necessarily know that they are reading something wrong, and spelling can be extremely difficult. Words like 'pleasant', are still extremely hard words for me to spell. So I don't think teaching Mikey multiple spellings would make it any easier for him to spell, but at least he would have a greater understanding of what's going on.
I use text-to-speech technology to read most material on the internet, and find that that helps the most for me right now.
I've been reading like this since I can remember. I feel my brain is working double-time TRYING to decipher whats in a text, and while making sense of it... it's a bit annoying if you think about it, but you learn to live with it.
Now, the experience in reading is the same experience I get when I go to watch a movie in 3D, which I hate! (with a passion)
I find the font easier to read, but I became and avid reader after getting diagnosed and given private reading lessons in the 2nd grade (circa 1977). I suspect I retrained by brain with constant reading from that point onward.
By contrast, my sister who is 11 years older didn't get diagnosed young, and still struggles to read. Though she can read these days, she has a strong preference for audiobooks. When studying, she listens at 3x to 4x speed. Crazy fast. For personal reading she uses 1x to 2x.
Today here's what I can see (and since this is self reported, take it with a grain of salt):
a. I'm a slow reader compared to other avid readers. I read much faster than people that don't read often; I read about half as fast (or less) as my college friends that are avid readers.
b. For sentences or paragraphs displayed briefly (as happens in movies or TV shows), I get so worried about finishing the sentence, I often can't finish in the time the wording is shown. (So in this case I'm guessing I'm much slower than average.) I'd guess this is "test anxiety" [1]. Taking tests as a kid was torture. Example, I was relaxed taking my SATs and got 1250 (did it in one shot), for my ACTs, I was distracted and buzzing around in my head, and scored below the 50 percentile.
c. Answer "right / left" question is not automatic. I always have to think. I imagine pointing from my shoulder through my arm in the direction I'm thinking. (Perhaps every one does this.) I just know there's a small mental pause.
d. I struggle with unfamiliar but initial concepts or names. For example, when learning object-oriented programming, it took a bit for me to grok class vs object. Usually this forces a deep understanding, which in the end is great, but can be a slow learning process.
Question 2
I certainly read by whole words today. The problem (major difference) with dyslexics is the process of learning to read. When learning to read, dyslexics read in "chunks" and by word shape - basically seeing the word as whole, not the individual letters. I recall the uneven scanning. I also recall thinking "who the heck are these other kids learning this?" because I could see no rhyme or reason. AFAIK, kids normally clearly see the letters making up the words. I needed intense phonics training to "get" this.
Education (phonics training) is absolutely critical. Your "mouse"/"house" examples are exactly the kinds of intense flashcard things I went through. Day after day, card after card.
The Dyslexie font should be complimentary. I seriously doubt it would be a substitute. Many fonts explicitly emphasis readability - Dyslexie attempts to increase legibility for a non-standard brain type.
I think the font rocks, and I've love to get my hands on the font to live with it for a while.
[1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Test_anxiety
I've wondered if dyslexia could be mitigated/cured by modifying a text reader to pulse the letters in sequence, thus giving the brain something to latch on to. Perhaps tie it in with an eye tracker. Gradually, you could reduce the strength of the pulse until they are reading normally, perhaps maybe. This idea was based on a theory that I heard that dyslexia may fundamentally stem from a timing issue in the brain; well, perhaps we could train that directly.
I have nobody to try this on, though, so I haven't done anything with it.
Interesting, I have that problem as well, also with compass directions (I often have to visualize a map to be sure I know whether I want to go "east" or "west" on a road. Also mentioned elsewhere on this page I transpose numbers a lot. I have no trouble reading though, and was a fairly avid reader when I was younger (don't have time for pure reading for pleasure much these days).
The best way I've heard it explained is that the word CAT doesn't look like a cat. A quick google search found this. http://dyslexiavictoria.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/dyslexic-pr...
"Also the alphabet is a type of abstract concept that Dyslexics have a frustrating time trying to learn because unless the letters are part of a word they don’t mean anything other than sounds. Dyslexics need concrete real images that can be connected to symbols such as words and numerals. “C – A – T” are sounds but do not bring up any images of real things. The word “CAT” however can be imagined."
Showing a kid the wrong spelling will only confuse them. (Writing was already confusing.) I was told growing up that my mind was trying really hard to find a cat in the letters, it flipped them around, held them upside down, put them on top of each other, and nothing looks like a cat. You don't actually see anything move (common question) but I used to stare at words trying to make sense of them. I don't know enough about cognition to tell you actually how it works.
I think if you can short circuit some of these wasted cycles it might help dyslexic kids pick up on what reading and writing actually is a bit faster. I'd give the font a try but they're using some sort of vector JS based font rendering (Cufon) and I don't know how to get that back to a ttf. But I doubt it would have much of an effect on myself anyway as I've learned how to read and write a long time ago.
Just my 2c
One thing about this issue that never really gets covered is that with repetition dyslexics can improve their condition. One of the main reasons I read and post it to ensure that I am constantly working to improve my ability to do so. Many times kids become discouraged and end up abandoning written language due to difficulties with their condition. It only serves to worsen their condition. I for example was given a computer at an early age to help with my dyslexia, I was allowed to submit all papers typed and I was excused from handwriting assignments due to being deemed to have a learning disability. This was both a blessing and a curse, it was a blessing because I became exposed to computers but a curse in the fact that to this day I am functionally illiterate when it comes to handwriting. My handwriting looks more akin to sandscript than English. I can read it and understand it, but to someone else it is an entirely different language. Fortunately they have better policies for learning disabilities now days and use a combined approach.
On an unrelated note, there are a lot of dyslexics (the ones that don't get discouraged or use their condition as a crutch) that end up in the math and science fields. It has been theorized that these people's ability to see textual items as 3D objects some how aids in their ability to visualize abstract concepts.
I know when I do higher level math I do not see numbers. I see objects that are represented by the numbers. I think for many just starting out in higher maths, variables are a difficult concept, but when you see each items as a object it helps one to look at all items in a equation as a variable some just have known values. I think dyslexics grasp this concept earlier because it is inherently how their mind works. Unfortunately many dyslexics never make it that far due to years of failing in academics.
http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Brain-New-Science-Read/dp/B004...
by a neuroscientist who has studied these issues for years and who is familiar with the difference that different scripts make in reading difficulties.
... and of course, neither to download for free.
What's the point of this font? Is it used beyond the promotional web site?
I didn't try to contact the creator because I don't have any specific need for the font right now, but I think that she's doning a disservice to dyslexic people by not publishing it under a Creative Commons license.
No part of this site may be reproduced, stored in any form,
electronically, mechanically, by photocopying, recording or
any other way without written permission from
Natascha Frensch.
Some people really don't understand the web.
http://www.studiostudio.nl/en/project-dyslexie/ http://i.imgur.com/xhjKI.png
At least in comparison to the video.
Desktop properties > Appearances > Effects > [x] Use the following methods to smooth edges of screen fonts: Select [Standard]
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YITsgCuHhUk/TgnPnR-FzUI/AAAAAAAAAB...
google translate: http://translate.google.ca/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl...
My girlfriend is dyslexic and is struggling (even with reading lessons, etc.) through college because of it. I had her read the example in the video and some of the text on their site and she was able to do so much more efficiently. I'd love to be able to purchase this font for her so she can use it when reading/writing documents for her classes, but the amount they are asking is simply too much for me.
I wonder if we'd be able to convince her health insurance to reimburse us for the cost? I can dream. :)