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Free Font Helps People With Dyslexia
Thornburg writes "There is a free font available which has been designed to make it easier for people with dyslexia to read. DailyTech has a piece which pulls together a BBC interview and blog postings by the designer, Abelardo Gonzalez, who received a C&D letter from another font designer who charges $69 for his dyslexia related font."
Never thought I had dyslexia, never imagined I had problems reading, but holy crap reading a page in anti-dyslexia fonts like this one http://www.pixelscript.net/gilldyslexic/ is like all the words leap off the page making sudden sense in an instant.
*random expression of surprise at finding something new at age 44*
No more comic sans? Please?
I'm pretty severely dyslexic, and I just plain cannot read his website in that font. The weird shading from top to bottom makes it look like it's been printed on a daisywheel with the platen out of alignment.
It's so hard to read I had to turn off the stylesheet to make my way through the page.
I'm torn on this. On the one hand, the OpenDyslexic guy specifically states he intended his project to infringe on the other Dyslexic fonts.
On the other hand, This Christian Boer guy comes across as having tried to stake a claim on the very idea of using a weighted font to combat Dyslexia.
On the, er, foot, the comparison image [apathyonline.net] that Boer shows off does have quite a few similarities. And beyond merely the "well duh, they're the same letters" level of similarities.
On the er, other foot, Holy cow, did not know that you cannot copyright a font. That explains all those $10 CDs with 5000 fonts on them and the like. I presume this means I can go find a copy of WildWord for free online instead of having to pay $TEXAS to replace the old digital download files I lost back in the day?
Your typeface doesn't look the same as his typeface. You can't copyright typefaces, and they're all derivative.
Typically what Adobe does is trademark the name, so there are many Palladins or Pallertrino's and the like, but only one Palatino (tm Adobe/Linotype).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatino
What Mr Boer is trying to do, is to bully competitors in an effort to block competition. This is not unusual. The world is full of little shits like this. You have to learn to get a thicker skin against them and just ignore him.
see, that's were the misunderstanding lies: wikipedia summarises quite well:
Under U.S. law, typefaces and the characters they contain are considered to be utilitarian objects whose utility outweighs any merit that may exist in protecting their creative elements. Typefaces are exempt from copyright protection in the United States (Code of Federal Regulations, Ch 37, Sec. 202.1(e); Eltra Corp. vs. Ringer). However, this finding was limited in Adobe Systems, Inc. v. Southern Software, Inc., wherein it was held that scalable computer fonts, i.e., the instructions necessary to render a typeface, constitute a "computer program" for the purposes of copyright law and hence are subject to protection. Hence the computer file(s) associated with a scalable font will generally be protected even though the specific design of the characters is not.
So in the US I would assume Boers has not claim, but you still can not distribute those CDs :)
The typeface design isn't copyrightable, the specification of that typeface *is* copyrightable. This is like saying a classical piece of music isn't copyrightable, but a recording of the BBC Symphonic Orchestra playing the classical piece *is*.
So if you printed and traced the typeface, even if the design is identical, as long as the control points, rendering hints etc. aren't the same it's not an infringement. The font file is different, the copyrightable parts are different.
Then to Christian Boers 'moral' claim.
Christian Boer certainly based his Dyslexia typeface on other typefaces and he has no more moral claim to it than you do. He did exactly what you did, took an existing typeface and played with it. Only he used the work of other for his personal profit, not for a good cause. So his claim is morally lower than yours.
He's a parasite, he copies others work, then claims special rights to it. Unlike Apple's he's capable of fooling lots of people, he'll just go away and good riddance to him.
... that frivolous sending of cease-and-desist letters would become illegal.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Look up SLAPP - Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. A number of states now have anti-SLAPP laws, though whether this case would be covered under them would be better answered by a lawyer - like many things, it'd depend on the state statute and specifics not really mentioned here.
It might be part of the reason for dropping charging even a nominal fee for the font - becoming a non-profit activity might trigger more protection. It might even be deductible for even more tax savings than he was getting for selling it(deduct labor vs having to make a profit).
I'm not a lawyer or a tax accountant, of course. If you want to do something of this nature, talk with qualified professionals.
I don't read AC A human right
I notice that when I find myself having a difficult time reading, it's because I'm reading text written by some idiot who likes to use every uncommon word in his vocabulary as often as possible. I imagine that what is going on is that one part of my brain is just scanning my eyes across the text, snapping little photos under the high-res portion of my retina, then passing them along to the next stage in the pipeline. With common language, that next stage can largely guess what a lot of things are, and so it works with lower quality data which allows me to read faster. Then suddenly I start reading text from an author who likes to use uncommon words and that stage of the pipeline suddenly needs more data. Usually when you read, you don't look at the letters, you just recognize the whole words, sometimes even just the shapes of the words. ...but when you encounter new words you don't see often, those letters aren't in the cache, and you have to back up and examine the letters more closely. ...and if it's a word you've never seen before, you'll need to look even closer if you want to guess how to pronounce it, or you just do as I tend to do and commit the word shape to your memory and surprise yourself six months later when someone uses it in conversation and you find that the smudge of sounds you've been using for that word in your mind as you read aren't even remotely similar to the actual pronunciation.
So I wouldn't be so sure it's the font that is allowing you to read more easily. It might just be that he didn't include any text on the page written by some overeducated jackass.
The other guy sent him a D&C letter.
But I'm not sure what dilation and curettage have to do with free fonts.
#DeleteChrome
offtopic -
p.s. your site expired -
NOTICE: This domain name expired on 09/23/2012 and is pending renewal or deletion.
http://kaoticevil.net/
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Because of the control freakery that Amazon "needs" you can't actually read a book in it. I think Amazon and Google should get the support on this font super quick.
I am a big user of Amazon e-books and not having the ability to change the fonts kind of defeats a major selling point over old paper books. If Amazon started doing this I suspect they would be repaid several dozen times over with people who appreciate it.
I think users should be allowed to choose their own font. So what if it looks totally crap. Its personal preference and it doesn't affect anyone else. Let the "Marketing" droids go swivel.
BTW,I am a bit pissed because I never knew my reading was difficult until I used this font. It's kind of a realisation! And someone is trying to stop me being able to do things better.
I also understand that Amazon etc are working on licencing it, but if we could change our own font, we wouldn't have the issue.
http://www.writeitfor.us - Writing IT for the IT generation.
I typed newlines, but apparently Slashdot decided to eat them. I thought it was just a bug with the preview as I've seen it do that before, with the newlines showing up in the final post, but apparently I no longer have any choice but to use
tags if I want newlines.
Probably replying to a troll, but anyway:
As a teacher, I can tell you that dyslexia is definitely not "an excuse". A pupil with dyslexia has been a member of my tutor group for the last four years. He struggles with reading, although use of a reading ruler is of tremendous help. His handwriting is difficult to decipher, and contains many mirrored letters (e.g. b/d, p/q, backwards s). However that difficulty aside he is one of the most intelligent and articulate 16-year-old's I have had the pleasure of teaching.
First thing i thought of was that it looked like the Team fortress 2 fonts.
Accusing people of making excuses is just an excuse.
Who out there think that the whole dislexia thing is an excuse? Sort of like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
You forgot to sign your post:
Sincerely,
Mitt Romney
I often have the impression that people who don't spell well use dyslexia as an excuse. I am very much aware that dyslexia is a real thing and a big burden to many people, but I have seen too many university students who just are too lazy to check their spelling and then use the dyslexia excuse. So I think you have a point here, Anonymus Cow person. Having a hard time reading and spelling or being too lazy to invest time and effort into that does not make you dyslectic per se.
-- Cheers!
I've always wondered why people feel the need to post shit like this. It's as though suggesting you have anything to do with teaching forces a bunch of random pricks to analyze every character you write, desperately looking for any grammatical mistakes just so they can point out "herp derp hope you don't teach English!"
We're not in class, and your response is old and tired.
Go stand in the corner with The Earth is Flat society, and global warming deniers.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
...my favorite graffito
I am not an English teacher, although of course all teachers have a responsibility for incorporating literacy into their lessons. Strangely enough, I take far more care over my lessons than I do with Slashdot comments.
Just in case you ever do consider teaching as a career, can I recommend that you look to improve your method of giving feedback? A snarky comment is humorous, but does not maximise the potential for learning. It would be much better to write something along the lines of:
"That was a good post, and expressed your point clearly. However, you have missed a comma and used an apostrophe unnecessarily in your final sentence. Please re-write the sentence with the grammar corrected below."
This sort of formative assessment rewards the learner (with praise) for their achievement as well as providing guidance on how to improve in the future.
This font makes me wonder if some of the Sixties and Seventies poster designers were dyslexic.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Later, Microsoft commissioned Verdana (Helvetica almost-clone) and Georgia (Times New Roman almost-clone) so they wouldn't have to get licenses for Windows' default fonts.
I thought Verdana was a "humanist" (that is, Frutiger-clone) font, not a "neogrotesque" (Helvetica-clone) font.
Compared to ( Mono || Gill ) Dyslexic it is appalling and doesn't even implement the asymmetry of letters that is key to parsing.
Because they weren't talking about teaching English, or even teaching in general. They just mentioned that they were a teacher.
We can like Yoda read better
I find the GillDyslexic font easier than the OpenDyslexic one due to the increased asymmetry.
Wouldn't... shouldn't a Dyslexic font be included as part of web fonts and free to use? Wouldn't it be nice to have the Gill font opened so we can use it by a Kickstarter campaign? I mean... £9.99 for a font, how the heck does that work? I can't see that working, can you?
A kickstarter campaign could include further research into the rewards to figure out what works best by methodical testing and it would raise cash a lot quicker than a $9.99 here and there.
Combine with a Yellow background.
Not just for Dyslexics, a good font might be better for all, but I don't think the Open one is that.
A blog I run for the wealth
> I wonder if dyslexia is like ADHD -- *everyone* has a little bit of it, and officially "having it" merely means that one has it beyond a clinically significant level.
That makes the huge and unproven assertion that everyone has some degree of ADHD. I reject that premise until it can be proven otherwise.
They're trying to trick dyslexics into paying $96!
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Well, it's a glaring error coming from someone who teaches kids, period. You're right, we're not in class, but perhaps said teacher is eager to learn about and correct this basic issue. In addition, naming himself "VVrath" can be seen as solicitation for pointing out improvement opportunities, and who are you to interfere with that?
I realize that many slashdotters don't give a flying rat's ass about grammar (mixing their with there, it's with its), so feel free to mod this to oblivion while modding up the equally uninteresting grammar denialist ("shit like this", "we're not in class", wow this IS novel and insightful). I like the fact that some people have the spine to express what is worth expressing despite the wrath of the plebs.
This kind of a reply would however have earned GP a snarky "You must be new here" comment in turn.
It's Slashdot. Polite feedback is generally expressed in a way that starts with "you're either an idiot or a shill, and ..." hereabouts. ~
Well, at least he's learning handwriting. I thought that was gone from the public school system.
But they all look alike too. You know, with all the domes and columns and stuff.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I read that in the sense that everybody can get distracted some times, but you only have ADHD when you get distracted so easily it affects your capacity do many things.
So the font itself is under Creative Commons Attribution. Not bad. But then:
The only way you'll make me unhappy is if you charge others for the font itself. That is all.
...in other words, it's simultaneously just an Attribution license, with a tacked-on Non-Commercial clause aside of the common CC licence.
It's not a standard licence, which adds another layer of complications. And because it has a commercial distribution prohibition, it's definitely not an "open source" project.
If you use Creative Commons licenses, go with the strictest license that describes your project to avoid unnecessary confusion. If you have a non-commercial clause, use the NC variants of licenses! Because nothing infuriates people more than seeing "it's under CC licence with no NC clause, cool" and then discovering that the actual license does prohibit commercial use to some extent.
As to the 16-year old and handwriting, there is no rule that he can't co-mingle capitol and lower-case letters, [...]
Actually, there are rules that say you shouldn't intermix upper case (which is easier to spell than "capital") and lower case letters. Whether he should follow them or not is another issue.
Look for dox on box in github. It does this I believe. I have no experience designing font renderers, but I did have an idea on how to make a typeface, and so I did what I could. :)
I wonder if dyslexia is like ADHD -- *everyone* has a little bit of it, ...
If you read some of the testimonials from the font website, they read as "I never thought I had dyslexia, but reading this is so much easier". I have the opposite experience, the font is as annoying as reading in comic sans, being distracting and blocky, and reminds me of some really bad home-brewed free fonts. So if the font is viewed as a test for dyslexia, making things better for diagnosed dyslexics, I sure don't see any degree of benefit at all. There are clearly normal reading people and then those with dyslexia of varying degree.
...about the agnostic dyslexic insomniac?
He used to lay awake at night wondering if there was a dog.
my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're