21–30 of 68 posts
Interestingly, the much hated font Comic Sans is another good font for dyslexics because the letters look more different from each other than e.g. Times New Roman. Therefore, if you're making invitations to your son's 7-year old birthday, Comic Sans is a great font for the text.
In the video is says that dyslexic readers made fewer errors when reading the text than normal readers, and they think that means that it helps dyslexics read easier. 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 tr…
According to the master's thesis there are no significant main effects: http://www.ilo.gw.utwente.nl/ilo/attachments/032_Masterthesi... 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 pThey 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.
This is very anecdotal naturally. But I am a dyslexic and it was really a struggle for me as a little kid. I don't like reading very much because it is a frustrating endeavor. I like information, I like thinking, and I guess I have favored smaller condensed pieces when reading. Perhaps why I love this website I can attest though that upon seeing the paragraph written at the end of the video that the text was much eas…
In the video is says that dyslexic readers made fewer errors when reading the text than normal readers, and they think that means that it helps dyslexics read easier. 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 tr…
Well, it is a nice solution to make someone's life easier when there are no signs of a cure coming. For example, this font could be set up as a system's default (or even it could be enforced as the 'one and only' typeface) and thus it will make dyslexic's life better. IMO it's a win. 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.
This is very anecdotal naturally. But I am a dyslexic and it was really a struggle for me as a little kid. I don't like reading very much because it is a frustrating endeavor. I like information, I like thinking, and I guess I have favored smaller condensed pieces when reading. Perhaps why I love this website I can attest though that upon seeing the paragraph written at the end of the video that the text was much eas…
I don't have much trouble with reading text but I am prone to transposing digits when I read numbers (particularly long numbers such as phone numbers, credit card numbers, account numbers). I wonder if there is a sub-type of dyslexia that is limited to numbers?
In the video is says that dyslexic readers made fewer errors when reading the text than normal readers, and they think that means that it helps dyslexics read easier. 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 tr…
According to the master's thesis there are no significant main effects: http://www.ilo.gw.utwente.nl/ilo/attachments/032_Masterthesi... I could imagine that this works well for specific kinds of dyslexia.
"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.
Interestingly, the much hated font Comic Sans is another good font for dyslexics because the letters look more different from each other than e.g. Times New Roman. Therefore, if you're making invitations to your son's 7-year old birthday, Comic Sans is a great font for the text.
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 few questions for dyslexics: 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 j…
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.