I was talking to my opticians recently and he said "Everyone gets cataracts, PVDs[1] and macular degeneration, if they live long enough". So we should all be glad that people are working in this area.
[1]Posterior Vitreous Detachment.
Atkinson Hyperlegible Font
51–60 of 239 posts
Re: Atkinson Hyperlegible Font
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
It downloads rather than opening in your browser because that’s how you’ve configured your browser. For me it opens in the browser (albeit in a new tab). There’s nothing wrong with the PDF, I can open it with all the PDF readers on my machine; it’s a basic v.1.6 PDF file. This is, in fact a “nice link to some web page text”: a page of text served over the web.
I think linking a PDF is less friendly to users who need Text-to-Speech technology, something the Braille Institute should be sensitive to...
What font does the PDF use?
Maybe their Atkinson font?
Re: Atkinson Hyperlegible Font
#53Although the font did really try to nail its goal, I think Iosevka really nailed it. On top of that, somebody took some of what Atkinson did with their font, and applied it to Iosevka, using its insanely powerful ability to be customized wildly, to produce http://thedarnedestthing.com/iosevka%20hyperlegible
Off-topic, but I think this might be the first time I've loaded a url including `%20` and had it actually render in my address bar as a space, rather than the percent-code. Is this something new in Firefox?
It's been like this in Firefox for quite some time
Re: Atkinson Hyperlegible Font
#54I'm uncomfortable with people publishing work like this without studies to back up whether they work for their intended audience. I'm sure the Braille Institute is expert in needs of low vision readers. And the design certainly looks promising. But AFAICT no one has studied whether this font is actually more readable. https://www.maxkohler.com/notes/2021-02-16-atkinson-hyperrea... The mess with the popular-but-not-ef…
To be fair, most studies on fonts, at least as they relate to reading speed, have shown that there's much more cultural variation than we realize. Different line spacing, serifs vs sans serifs, font weights, etc can all affect reading speed positively or negatively based on age of the reader or cultural background.
It turns out that the fastest fonts to read in are the ones people have practiced using the most.
Given this, perhaps a more useful metric would be the maximum reading speeds for each font. This could give us something of an idea of what is possible given sufficient proficiency.
Fonts like Atkinson Hyperlegible are very well designed around some simple but well accepted principles yet, to most people without a designer's eye, it looks like any other sans serif font
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PS if you wanna keep up with the latest in font readability research, you should check out the Readability Consortium:
Re: Atkinson Hyperlegible Font
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are a number of very nice monospace typefaces that have lots of character variants so you can essentially pick and choose different letter styles (dotted, crossed or regular zeros, etc). I personally love Fira Code with its ligatures.
I recently discovered Fira code through https://www.codingfont.com/ . I played with font names off, and Fira code won two times in a row :) I'm still amazed at how pleasant it looks on my screen.
Oh, I didn't know of https://www.codingfont.com/, the tournament style competition is pretty cool. I also like that you can turn off the labels.
I've used Fira Code for years and tried to find an alternative on https://www.programmingfonts.org/ but it's very difficult comparing so many different options at once.
Re: Atkinson Hyperlegible Font
#56I feel as though there should be a standard set of tests that any or all fonts run through to demonstrate the various properties they want to claim.
Don't tell me "better", tell me "Scored an 8.6 on legibility in the standard font assessment test".
Re: Atkinson Hyperlegible Font
#57I was talking to my opticians recently and he said "Everyone gets cataracts, PVDs[1] and macular degeneration, if they live long enough". So we should all be glad that people are working in this area. [1]Posterior Vitreous Detachment.
Over the past 2-3 years I went from needing reading glasses for small print to needing reading glasses for nearly everything in "normal"-sized print. I even keep HN at +125% (thanks, Chrome) because the default is too small. I still need my reading glasses at this magnification, but I don't want to magnify it too much more because of limited screen real-estate. This is just from normal age-related presbyopia.
I'm hoping that as the tech-savvy population ages, more thought will be put into design for vision challenges. Honestly I very low expectations, though.
Re: Atkinson Hyperlegible Font
#58I'm uncomfortable with people publishing work like this without studies to back up whether they work for their intended audience. I'm sure the Braille Institute is expert in needs of low vision readers. And the design certainly looks promising. But AFAICT no one has studied whether this font is actually more readable. https://www.maxkohler.com/notes/2021-02-16-atkinson-hyperrea... The mess with the popular-but-not-ef…
As a dyslexic the mechanism for OpenDyslexic always seemed a little off for me. How does a differently shaped font help adjust for a difference in cognition?
However in this case it would seem like focusing on ensuring that the letters can be distingushed with poor vision has a more direct mechanism? - though it may be that other fonts are better
Re: Atkinson Hyperlegible Font
#59I'm uncomfortable with people publishing work like this without studies to back up whether they work for their intended audience. I'm sure the Braille Institute is expert in needs of low vision readers. And the design certainly looks promising. But AFAICT no one has studied whether this font is actually more readable. https://www.maxkohler.com/notes/2021-02-16-atkinson-hyperrea... The mess with the popular-but-not-ef…
The answer to the question "Was there any scientific data or studies used in the design?", which begins
"The design comes from the tradition of type design. It’s not really rocket science... " does little to inspire confidence.
Re: Atkinson Hyperlegible Font
#60Are there any monospaced fonts like this, with a focus on hyperlegibility?
Font preference is very subjective. My personal fave is bitstream vers sans mono. But the one that ships with pychcharm is really good, too.
Python developer here seconding Bitstream Vera Sans Mono. I like having that tiny space between successive underlines, i.e. in things like
def __init__(self, a, b, c)