It was recently estimated that as many as 40 million adults in the US are dyslexic, and yet only two million of these actually know it – meaning, of course, that the dark figures are massive when it comes to this reading disorder.
The good news is that to the millions of people across the world struggling to process letters, some relief could be on the way.
A Dutch graphic designer, who himself is dyslexic, has designed a new set of typeface that is said to make it a lot easier to distinguish between similar letters. Most fonts are designed for for aesthetic purposes, and these often makes it more challenging for people with dyslexia as they tend to view letters at 3D objects and as many letters are based off of one another, it’s easier for them to flip them around and jumble them up.
The typeface, known as Dyslexie, emphasizes the individual differences of letters by bolding the bottoms of letters like “p” and “d”(so they stay right side up), lengthening letters like “h” (so they don’t look like an “n”), and slanting letters like “j” (to set them apart from an “i”). So far it has helped nearly three quarters of students surveyed read with fewer mistakes, according to independent research.
If you are dyslexic yourself, and have children that are or you think might be, the font is available for free on their website and might be worth trying.
