What Makes a Dyslexia Font Work?

Your child is brilliant. They may have excellent fact retention, excel in the arts, or tell incredible stories. When your brilliant child has difficulty with reading, writing, and decoding text, they may have dyslexia. 

Dyslexia in kids is incredibly common, affecting somewhere between 5% to 10% of all Americans. Researchers created assistive technology to help. They have developed a dyslexia font to make reading easier for those who struggle. 

Are you wondering if a font could really make a difference for individuals with learning disabilities? Read on to learn more about dyslexia, and how the dyslexia font can improve the lives of dyslexic individuals. 

What Is Dyslexia?

Dyslexia is a learning disability that affects an individual’s ability to read, write, and sometimes speak. It is not a vision problem and does not have any effect on a person’s IQ or intelligence. It provides challenges with processing written words when they appear in print or writing. 

Dyslexia does have a genetic component and tends to run in families. It affects the area of the brain responsible for making connections between letters, sounds, and meanings. In some cases, it can be outgrown:

Signs of Dyslexia

Individuals with dyslexia struggle with matching letters to sounds. They may be unable to recognize or break down the sounds in words. They may struggle to generate or complete rhymes as early as preschool. 

Why Does a Dyslexia Font Work? 

Researchers have found that individuals with dyslexia have very dynamic brains. To make problem-solving while reading easier, they tend to rotate or mirror letters in their minds in an attempt to make sense out of them. Imagine what happens when you flip or rotate a letter like “p” and you will begin to see the problem with this strategy. 

Experts working with Dyslexia schools, such as Read Academy, decided to pursue a solution that might help to make reading more intuitive. Traditionally, font designers seek to make text look uniform and aesthetically pleasing. In contrast, a dyslexia font differentiates the letters by making their unique features stand out. 

The letters in a dyslexia font are also weighted at the bottom. This helps dyslexic individuals to notice when their brain has flipped a letter. The weighted base makes these letters look top-heavy, and the brain may automatically flip them back. 

Reading With Dyslexia Can Be Easier

At least one dyslexia font is free to download for use at home or in schools. These fonts do not “cure” dyslexia, nor do they work for all people. Even so, they can make it more comfortable and intuitive for individuals with dyslexia to process text. 

If you know someone with dyslexia, share this post and let them know that there is a font out there that might improve their life.

Check out the rest of our blog for more helpful posts with tips that can make life easier.