Watching my kids learning how to read made me truly appreciate how difficult it can be to distinguish letters of the Roman alphabet. If you think about it, a lot of the letters are truly alike - b and p are the same thing with different rotation, v and w look almost the same and so on. Dyslexics have even greater trouble because their brains constantly "mix up" these letters.
There's a lot we now know on how to help treat dyslexics, but can our choice of letterform help? Christian Boer of studiostudio, a graphic designer with dyslexia, has created a font called "Dyslexie" that is designed to emphasize the differences between similar letters to make it easier for dyslexics to read.
The result is encouraging: "The study at the University of Twente showed that people with dyslexia made fewer reading errors when they use the dyslexia font compared to using standard font."
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Boston Globe
1. Dyslexia is a lie. The USA have a dyslexia rate of 25% and they use the same letters as us other western industry nations.
There are many schools that use flawed methods to teach writing and reading. Not only in the USA of course, but the American education system has special its reputation by now. And this "dyslexia" rate just proves it. There is no disease behind it, where would it come from? The genes? Or is it the smog outside?
There are two kinds of schools, one that teaches you how to write a word correctly from the first grade on, and the other kind that doesn't want to bother with this difficulty and tells their kids in first grade to write everything like they want "for now, we will teach you the proper writing later".
25%, that's what you get for this. And for using a language where most of the time, all 5 vowels sound exactly the same and simply get swallowed. The inability to write foreign words is absolutely explainable, those kids never had a chance. :D
2. JohnJ's Dutch would matter more if he had made a video to show to the Dutch public.
3. Ok I just watched the video. The same hilarity as always, "the letters start to rotate". Here the MAGIC comes into play again, for when we are absolutely lacking (or ignoring) a proper cause of "dyslexia".
We used to call it not-being-able-to-spell and it was a problem parents could fix by sending your kids to school. And still "dyslexia" prefers children from poor families. There's more evil unexplainable magic in their families I take it?
The more we accept this excuse and spread the lie, the less people will be able to spell properly in a foreseeable amount of time.
http://www.neatorama.com/2011/07/13/a-typeface-designed-for-dyslexics/
Regardless of whether dyslexia "exists" -- and your "facts" are certainly not generally recognised as such -- it appears that a number of people who have been diagnosed as dyslexic find that this font (and others like it) really do help them.
So: people have a problem and this helps. Why do you care what the problem is called? Why not let those people decide whether their problem is caused by poor teaching or some sort of disorder?
I, too, noticed that the font costs 700eu. Trying to profit from illness (or, indeed, from a social disadvantage like illiteracy, not that I think that this is what that is) is truly disgusting.
As you can read about the science of the reading brain in the Squid and Proust, some people are not able to make these parts of the brain work together. If it is helpful to use a font that is more discernible, it can help all of us, as one of the reviewers noted.
On the one hand it is, on the other hand they don't make wheelchairs for free either.
Still, this is "just" a font. Personally I would not want to make a profit from it. What I'm wondering is this: when the creator started on this project, did he want to help people or did he just want to make money?
I hope someone makes a free version of the font so i can try it. $750, okay for a business or a school system, but for a individual that is sick...