Read Regular, a New Typeface for Dyslexics
A Dutchwoman, Natascha Frensch, has released a new typeface designed to be read by people with dyslexia and called Read Regular.
Based on the accentuating of differences between letters dyslexics tend to confuse, Read Regular proposes a different shape for letters like ‘b’ and ‘d’ instead of flipping the ‘b’ to get a ‘d’ and uses large openings for letters like ‘a’ and ‘o’. Ascenders and descenders are extended and no serif is added to prevent the reader from visually “closing&rsdquo; the shapes. It also uses a relatively large hinting to create space around the letters, especially for Read Space.
The PDF presenting the font shows an example of Read Regular typeset in 10pt/14pt and 8pt/12pt: the result is quite nice and certainly more pleasant than Comic Sans, which was regarded as a good candidate for typesetting texts for dyslexics, because of its assymetrical shapes.
The next step will be to make this typeface widely available so that it can be used on websites, for example: I’m pretty sure it would look very good on screen. It would be interesting to know if Natascha Frensch has made tests in web pages… I’d be one of the first to use Read Regular, that’s for sure!
