Add to Google Web Fonts about open-dyslexic HOT 10 OPEN

In the end, I decided not to onboard this (or any other font made for dyslexics) to Google Fonts, because I kindly believe they are all based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what dyslexia is. I'd love to help dyslexics and kids read better, but I believe fonts can't help them: I think there is no detectable reading performance difference between Arial and Dyslexie for dyslexic readers.

As a citable paper on this, Monotype commissioned a literature review of the dyslexic fonts from Chuck Bigelow and Kris Holmes: http://bigelowandholmes.typepad.com/bigelow-holmes/2014/11/typography-dyslexia.html (B&H are big names in the type industry; Chuck Bigelow worked as a type manager at Adobe when it was a startup in the 80s...)

And there's also a less academic / lighter article in Communication Arts: http://www.commarts.com/columns/should-dyslexics-unite.html

And more recently, in http://typedrawers.com/discussion/1721/dyslexie-font-activism was this quote:

…Using a font with claims to improve reading for individuals with dyslexia without evidence to support this claim could result in further frustrations by teachers, parents, and individuals with dyslexia when no differences is observed after changing fonts used. Teachers and other practitioners need to be able to discriminate between those interventions that have been empirically shown to be effective from those that have not… Inert interventions can in fact cause other forms of harm, in depriving resources (time and financial) away from those interventions that have demonstrated efficacy… Further, the use of unsubstantiated interventions can impact the credibility of the profession and lead to the public losing trust in special educators… Finally, the most harm may come when students who have already experienced significant struggle and academic failures related to learning to read, have yet another experience with failure when they are not able to read significantly better in a font designed to do so. A repeated failure experience can further damage students’ self-efficacy and academic self-esteem.

Wery, Jessica J., and Jennifer A. Diliberto, ‘The Effect of a Specialized Dyslexia Font, OpenDyslexic, on Reading Rate and Accuracy’, Annals of Dyslexia, 2016, 1–14 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11881-016-0127-1;

In the spirit of scientific inquiry, I welcome peer-reviewed scientific research that demonstrates such fonts can really help. Until then... :)

from open-dyslexic.

The commarts.com link above is broken; the current one appears to be https://www.commarts.com/columns/should-dyslexics-unite-on-a-typeface. (Perhaps you could edit your response to fix this. Feel free to delete this comment if you do that.)

from open-dyslexic.

+1

from open-dyslexic.

By all means, I don't mind if Google receives a huge amount of submissions for this.
I do believe something will happen soon on this front though. :)

from open-dyslexic.

Yep. They said soon. :)

from open-dyslexic.

Well this is a shame - 6 months on and it's still not there. So, @antijingoist submitted it, they say "soon", but nothing happened?

I went to "submit a font" but it says "Only submit fonts that you own all related copyrights, trademarks and other rights for" and at the bottom it asks me to confirm that "I own all rights to this font".

So there's nothing I can do - can you try re-submitting it again? There are 600 fonts at Google and I think this one would be a really good one to have.

from open-dyslexic.

Yep. Thats because that's all I've been told. There was a lot more work put into this one outside of just a submission on the webpage. Just waiting for someone to approve it. Which, was, soon

I'll try to contact them again and see what's going on.

from open-dyslexic.

Hey @antijingoist, do you know if Google has gotten anywhere with this?

from open-dyslexic.

Hey,

i'm trying to do a quick webapp for a speech therapist in a school, and i'm interested in using it as well as a google font.

did you try to make a PR here https://github.com/google/fonts ?
or to ping them via twitter or smth ?

from open-dyslexic.

Another study that adds to the above comment relating to the font not being found to improve reading rate or accuracy.

The effect of a specialized dyslexia font, OpenDyslexic, on reading rate and accuracy

from open-dyslexic.