5 ms·

While the characters are certainly distinctive, I find paragraphs to actually be less legible than, say, Times New Roman.

by sb057 2y ago

alberth 2y ago
> It improves legibility and readability Agreed. It seems to improve legibility. I'm not so sure it improve readability. Readability is largely influenced by the x-height (height of lowercase letter), because your brain is trying to discern the "shape" of a word - which allows you to read faster. Hence why ALL CAPS is difficult to read because the word shape is the same. Atkinson appears to have a high x-height, which reduces readability.
prewett 2y ago
I think SIL's Andika font [1] is designed with similar goals, although I think informed more by teaching reading. I didn't see any large samples, but the font seems a little subtler. Presumably, given the name, the Braille Institute's readers are more visually impaired than SIL's, so for those us with less impairment, maybe SIL's would be more readable? OpenDyslexic [2] is another interesting font. I've heard that asymmetry helps dyslexic readers, and (given a cursory glance) they seem to have done a good job having asymmetry and style. I've also heard that SIL's font is helpful for dyslexics, but that was a while back and now they have multiple font styles, so I'm not sure if the one above is the one or not. I didn't realize this until I worked on some software for dyslexic readers, but the normal computer font makes bdpq look pretty much identical except for rotation. It has a minimalist elegance, but for new/foreign readers, it's pretty subtle. I remember learning Chinese and had to spend quite some time with two characters, which differed only with one have a dot and one a short vertical line at top (a dot looks pretty similar to a vertical line at a cursory glance, as it is more inverted teardrop shape than a circle). After that the western alphabet looked a lot more uniform than I'd originally thought. [1] https://software.sil.org/andika/andika-and-the-visually-impaired/ https://software.sil.org/andika/andika-and-the-visually-impa... [2] https://opendyslexic.org/ https://opendyslexic.org/
- heymhm 2y ago
  Andika is beautiful, thanks :)
- AndyKluger 2y ago
  There's a font apparently based on Andika with some disambiguating improvements, called Cadman.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
I'm not a font or readabiliity expert, but it sounds like that is the tradeoff they had to make; paragraph legibility is not as important as being able to make out the words in the first place, and people with visual issues will struggle to read even if the font is better suited for them.

While the characters are certainly distinctive, I find paragraphs to actually be less legible than, say, Times New Roman.

by sb057 2y ago

While the characters are certainly distinctive, I find paragraphs to actually be less legible than, say, Times New Roman.

alberth 2y ago

> It improves legibility and readability Agreed. It seems to improve legibility. I'm not so sure it improve readability. Readability is largely influenced by the x-height (height of lowercase letter), because your brain is trying to discern the "shape" of a word - which allows you to read faster. Hence why ALL CAPS is difficult to read because the word shape is the same. Atkinson appears to have a high x-height, which reduces readability.

prewett 2y ago

I think SIL's Andika font [1] is designed with similar goals, although I think informed more by teaching reading. I didn't see any large samples, but the font seems a little subtler. Presumably, given the name, the Braille Institute's readers are more visually impaired than SIL's, so for those us with less impairment, maybe SIL's would be more readable? OpenDyslexic [2] is another interesting font. I've heard that asymmetry helps dyslexic readers, and (given a cursory glance) they seem to have done a good job having asymmetry and style. I've also heard that SIL's font is helpful for dyslexics, but that was a while back and now they have multiple font styles, so I'm not sure if the one above is the one or not. I didn't realize this until I worked on some software for dyslexic readers, but the normal computer font makes bdpq look pretty much identical except for rotation. It has a minimalist elegance, but for new/foreign readers, it's pretty subtle. I remember learning Chinese and had to spend quite some time with two characters, which differed only with one have a dot and one a short vertical line at top (a dot looks pretty similar to a vertical line at a cursory glance, as it is more inverted teardrop shape than a circle). After that the western alphabet looked a lot more uniform than I'd originally thought. [1] https://software.sil.org/andika/andika-and-the-visually-impaired/ https://software.sil.org/andika/andika-and-the-visually-impa... [2] https://opendyslexic.org/ https://opendyslexic.org/

heymhm 2y ago
Andika is beautiful, thanks :)
AndyKluger 2y ago
There's a font apparently based on Andika with some disambiguating improvements, called Cadman.

Cthulhu_ 2y ago

I'm not a font or readabiliity expert, but it sounds like that is the tradeoff they had to make; paragraph legibility is not as important as being able to make out the words in the first place, and people with visual issues will struggle to read even if the font is better suited for them.