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Inclusive Sans: Text font designed for accessibility and readability

oliviaking.com

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Re: Inclusive Sans: Text font designed for accessibility and readability

#61

Obligatory: the most accessible font is usually a font your readers are already familiar with. This font looks distinctive, and personally I kinda like it, but it's not a magic wand you can wave over a document to make it more accessible.

Was going to ask, wouldn't something like Times New Roman be the most accessible just cause people are used to it? Plus, serifs make the letters more recognizable.

Familiarity doesn't make Times New Roman's 'l' and '1' distinguishable.

I think sans serif fonts are preferred for most screen reading because it takes effort to perceive the tiny serif details, or just the really thin lines like the horizontal in the 'e', at typical font sizes.

But there are no absolutes so fonts that try to be more legible use some tails and such to make characters distinguishable.

Re: Inclusive Sans: Text font designed for accessibility and readability

#62
post #60

Another good font for this is OpenDyslexic https://opendyslexic.org/

Not really. In studies, OpenDyslexic and other "dyslexia fonts" with exaggerated shapes didn't perform better than commonly used conventional fonts.

I created a browser plugin that became pretty popular among readers with dyslexia, and we got a lot of requests for OD support. We added it and some people like it. My theory is that this relates partly to the increased kerning and the weight of the font (which makes a particularly big difference in combination with the color-based tech we use, since it makes the color more visible that way).

I have seen that some dyslexia fonts don't seem to have an advantage from a population level, but that doesn't mean it isn't useful for some people. Unless there's evidence that people who think it's useful are actually being misled by their perception, I'd say it's not a bad idea to let people know it exists.

Re: Inclusive Sans: Text font designed for accessibility and readability

#63

Obligatory: the most accessible font is usually a font your readers are already familiar with. This font looks distinctive, and personally I kinda like it, but it's not a magic wand you can wave over a document to make it more accessible.

Was going to ask, wouldn't something like Times New Roman be the most accessible just cause people are used to it? Plus, serifs make the letters more recognizable.

Serifs makes it harder to read on screens, many people don't like them including dyslexic people.

With screens becoming more precise, it may be less of an issue, serifs and especially horrible on low definition screens, but it's not clear they improve things on higher definition screens.

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