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Comment on You should know there's a font designed to make reading easier, especially for people with low vision. It's called Atkinson Hyperlegible Next. It's free for personal and commercial use.

RutabagasnTurnips@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

I see a lot of people discussing this font and mentioning OpenDyslexia.

I couldn’t find research on Atkinson Hyperlegible. It says it was recently this year, I also couldn’t find any research on effectuveness when I looked through the website. If I missed it I aplogize and would love to learn more if someone wants to take the time to link/copy the applicable info. My hope is since it’s a non-profit group focusing on helping those with vision problems it has been well developed tested for effectiveness. Certainly if someone wants to try for themselves please do. Before going all out though say converting large volumes of things or implementing for a classroom I think asking questions would be prudent.

Unfortunately OpenDyslexia does not actually help those with this learn disability! The authors of the below article do a good job of discussing why and the harm misconception/misuse of products like these can create.

Wery JJ, Diliberto JA. The effect of a specialized dyslexia font, OpenDyslexic, on reading rate and accuracy. Ann Dyslexia. 2017 Jul;67(2):114-127. doi: 10.1007/s11881-016-0127-1. Epub 2016 Mar 18. PMID: 26993270; PMCID: PMC5629233. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5629233/

Here is some more info and strategies for those instered in regards to dyslexia. childmind.org/article/understanding-dyslexia/

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xye@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Damn, I was hoping the research would pan out here. I have problems reading longer chunks of text but OpenDyslexia has helped me with that. I read exclusively on my Kobo because of it.

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- RutabagasnTurnips@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  It would be great if it did show improvement when evaluated in research. The clinical evidence just isn’t there though.
  
  There is nothing stopping someone from enjoying it out of pure personal preference though.
  
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snek_boi@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Thank you so much for taking the time to research and share you findings.

As to Atkinson Hyperlegible, I suppose its merit could be, at most, making it harder to confuse characters. This blog post shows how Atkinson Hyperlegible makes it easy to distinguish:

Capital I, lowercase l, pipe |, numeral 1: I l | 1

Capital O, zero: O 0

Capital B, numeral 8: B 8

Beyond these benefits (and as you mentioned), there is just not enough information on whether Atkinson Hyperlegible definitely helps or not.

Also, thanks for the link on dyslexia. I suppose that, to an extent, promoting fonts like Open Dyslexia could lead to the unintended consequences described in the article.
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