Slashdot Mirror
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*
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.
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.
Fonts are a lot more complicated than you think. You're not going to easily be able to convert a given imagefile into a font.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Interesting, I often find the same reading things not succinct and broken into paragraphs.
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.
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.
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.
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.