A Dutch designer with dyslexia has created a typeface that, study support, improves reading quality and decreases the number of errors people with this disorder make.
After spending his childhood dealing with the difficulties of his disability, Christian Boer had the idea of creating the police called simply Dyslexia. In 2010, a study from the University of Twente, the Netherlands, demonstrated its effectiveness. 72.2 % read faster, 69.4 % make fewer read errors. In fact, 500 schools in the Netherlands are already using it.
The Dyslexia font is primarily used in two ways. First, it can be used daily as a productivity character (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, e-mail, etc.) in all software allowing you to select a font. Also, Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox web browsers can be specified to display visited websites in this character.
“It's a very simple way to help dyslexics, easy to implement and which does not require any particular intervention on the part of the teachers. It's like a pair of glasses, in a way, ”explains René Van Den Heuvel, from AuxiliDys, reseller for the French-speaking world, in a telephone interview.
As we can read on his site, people with dyslexia often reverse or flip the letters, or see a mirror effect. Thus, the Dyslexia policy offers many features, including the following:
- the space between letters and words is adapted to give them more volume;
- an emphasis is put on the bottom of the letters, giving them an effect of gravity and preventing the brain from turning them over;
- different measures make it possible to better differentiate the characters, such as increased aperture, inclination and variation in height;
- punctuation and capital letters are thickened to better identify them;
- etc.
A video on youtube explains these characteristics in detail and thereby gives a better understanding of the difficulties experienced by dyslexics.
The company AuxiliDys offers on its site a few tips to optimize the layout of documents intended for dyslexics. There is even a " plugin That a designer can add to a website to allow visitors to instantly see all text in that font.
Dyslexia works on Mac and Windows, but not on tablets until you can add a font manually.
The policy currently costs 49 € in promotion for home use. In schools, the rate is calculated based on the number of students in the school. For example, for a school of 500 pupils, it costs 499 € to equip all the computers of the establishment, or less than 1 € per pupil. There is also a special pack for speech therapists.