I love it when design is used for a greater purpose. Designer Christian Boer has created a typeface to help dyslexics read more accurately and with less frustration.
“When they’re reading, people with dyslexia often unconsciously switch, rotate and mirror letters in their minds. Traditional typefaces make this worse, because they base some letter designs on others, inadvertently creating ‘twin letters’ for people with dyslexia.
Boer, a dyslexic himself, designed the letters with heavier bottom portions to prevent the reader’s mind from turning them upside down.
Lengthened ascenders and descenders – the portions of the characters that stretch beyond the two main horizontal guides – also makes them easier to tell apart.
Letters that usually appear similar are subtly italicized and have added tails where possible, so they no longer look alike and pose less risk of the reader mirroring them.
Boer has also added larger spaces between letters and words, as well as bold capitals and punctuation marks so the start and end of sentences can be better differentiated.
Dyslexia is estimated to affect 10 percent of the world’s population.
