[HN Gopher] Atkinson Hyperlegible Font
___________________________________________________________________
Atkinson Hyperlegible Font
Author : fanf2
Score : 742 points
Date : 2024-09-15 20:42 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.brailleinstitute.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.brailleinstitute.org)
| rcarmo wrote:
| Not bad. Can't see if they have a fixed width version though.
| jdknezek wrote:
| I made a custom build[1] of Iosevka[2] that chooses glyph
| variants based on Atkison Hyperlegible. I like it a lot and
| over time prefer it to the other Iosevka stylistic sets.
|
| [1]:
| https://github.com/jdknezek/Iosevka/blob/jdk/scripts/hyperse...
|
| [2]: https://typeof.net/Iosevka
| lambdaba wrote:
| Sounds very cool, could you upload a screenshot of it in
| action?
| jdknezek wrote:
| Here is a screenshot of some sample text in VS Code on
| Windows: https://imgur.com/7BZS3Pp
|
| And here's an action shot: https://imgur.com/sudNqWM
| lambdaba wrote:
| looks great, thanks!
| indemnity wrote:
| Since I discovered Iosevka a few years back it has been my
| daily driver for 80% of the time. I use other fonts from time
| to time but I always go back to my custom build of Iosevka.
|
| Yours actually looks a bit more readable than mine, gonna
| check it out your build plan.
|
| Thanks!
| ryukoposting wrote:
| It reminds me of IBM Plex, if you're just looking for similar
| looks.
| m463 wrote:
| > Please enter your email address to begin downloading.
| zamadatix wrote:
| What's funny is on the same page they say it's on Google Fonts
| and you don't need enter an email (or have an account) to grab
| it from there
| https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Atkinson+Hyperlegible
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| And from Google Fonts, it's licensed under the Open Font
| License, not a unique one.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Good find. That makes their custom licence shown on their
| own website even weirder.
| vntok wrote:
| This sentence is indeed written on the linked page. What
| exactly is it that you want to express?
| t-3 wrote:
| It's available as a package on all the linux and BSD distros
| I'm running.
| rossy wrote:
| They don't tell you you can put anything with an @ and a . in
| that field.
| sharpshadow wrote:
| Yea email fields without required verification get my maximum
| character length pseudo email.
| queuebert wrote:
| Why not your SQL injection attack email?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That's a hard nope, for me.
|
| It's only a "nice-to-have" font.
|
| I have an OG mac.com email, and some woman used it to sign a
| donation to ASPCA, a number of years ago.
|
| They then sold it to some liberal group, who then sold it to
| some ultra-liberal group.
|
| I get _dozens_ of extreme-left emails, every day. It 's crazy.
|
| I'm not extreme anything, and want to puke, just reading the
| subject lines (for the record, the extreme-right is an even
| more effective emetic).
|
| I would be interested (but not really _that_ interested) in
| finding out who these folks would sell my email to.
| Heliodex wrote:
| Pretty awesome font, I've found it pairs really well with other
| readable fonts like Lexend too.
| sb057 wrote:
| While the characters are certainly distinctive, I find paragraphs
| to actually be less legible than, say, Times New Roman.
| alberth wrote:
| > It improves legibility and readability
|
| Agreed.
|
| It seems to improve legibility. I'm not so sure it improve
| readability.
|
| Readability is largely influenced by the x-height (height of
| lowercase letter), because your brain is trying to discern the
| "shape" of a word - which allows you to read faster. Hence why
| ALL CAPS is difficult to read because the word shape is the
| same.
|
| Atkinson appears to have a high x-height, which reduces
| readability.
| prewett wrote:
| I think SIL's Andika font [1] is designed with similar goals,
| although I think informed more by teaching reading. I didn't
| see any large samples, but the font seems a little subtler.
| Presumably, given the name, the Braille Institute's readers are
| more visually impaired than SIL's, so for those us with less
| impairment, maybe SIL's would be more readable?
|
| OpenDyslexic [2] is another interesting font. I've heard that
| asymmetry helps dyslexic readers, and (given a cursory glance)
| they seem to have done a good job having asymmetry and style.
| I've also heard that SIL's font is helpful for dyslexics, but
| that was a while back and now they have multiple font styles,
| so I'm not sure if the one above is the one or not.
|
| I didn't realize this until I worked on some software for
| dyslexic readers, but the normal computer font makes bdpq look
| pretty much identical except for rotation. It has a minimalist
| elegance, but for new/foreign readers, it's pretty subtle. I
| remember learning Chinese and had to spend quite some time with
| two characters, which differed only with one have a dot and one
| a short vertical line at top (a dot looks pretty similar to a
| vertical line at a cursory glance, as it is more inverted
| teardrop shape than a circle). After that the western alphabet
| looked a lot more uniform than I'd originally thought.
|
| [1] https://software.sil.org/andika/andika-and-the-visually-
| impa...
|
| [2] https://opendyslexic.org/
| heymhm wrote:
| Andika is beautiful, thanks :)
| AndyKluger wrote:
| There's a font apparently based on Andika with some
| disambiguating improvements, called Cadman.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I'm not a font or readabiliity expert, but it sounds like that
| is the tradeoff they had to make; paragraph legibility is not
| as important as being able to make out the words in the first
| place, and people with visual issues will struggle to read even
| if the font is better suited for them.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| See also the font designed for readability* in Airbus cockpits
|
| https://b612-font.com/
| quesera wrote:
| The header image on that site seems to show two font variants
| (slashed-zero and non-slashed) in a single display. This
| puzzles me!
| aftbit wrote:
| I see the slashed zero on the right, but I cannot find a way
| to get that out of the Google font display. Perhaps the
| slashed zero is actually a different font?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Found a git issue that indicates the slashed 0 is in
| private use area of the font
|
| https://github.com/polarsys/b612/issues/20#issuecomment-544
| 8...
|
| To answer the grandparent, unslashed 0s are used in
| numerical figures (speed, pressure) while slashed 0s are
| reserved for the alphanumeric figures (headings and other
| idenitifers)
| quesera wrote:
| I saw that usage pattern, but then noticed that zeroes in
| times are slashed.
|
| So, "slashed in strings even if non-alpha, but non-
| slashed in numerics, and times are strings"? Seems viable
| enough, but I'd choose consistency instead. :)
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I guess we'd have to get into whether clock time is
| ordinal or cardinal :^)
| spidermonkey23 wrote:
| It's a good one to add as a custom font on Kindle/ebook devices
| RadiozRadioz wrote:
| I did find it easy to read. But the font size on this website is
| also larger than average (at least on my mobile phone), so that
| is a variable that would have to be controlled first.
| jsheard wrote:
| It's on Google Fonts so you can use their type tester:
|
| https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Atkinson+Hyperlegible/test...
| amirmasoudabdol wrote:
| Is there a monospaced version, or an inspired monospaced version
| based on this available?
| nh2 wrote:
| I need that too for hyper-OCR-able monospace labels.
| cromniomancer wrote:
| Not that I've found, but I use Commit Mono alongside it with
| good results
|
| https://commitmono.com/
| keyle wrote:
| "Safari download not working, try Firefox or Chrome"
|
| You gotta be joking.
| AbraKdabra wrote:
| I know right? Who uses Safari nowadays?
| keyle wrote:
| A website where a download link requires FF/Chrome. The
| whole website I thought was silly, but that takes the
| cake.
| Cyberdog wrote:
| I looked at the code to see why it would be doing that. It
| seems to handle the font customization stuff by basically
| downloading all of the variants and then combining them
| into a zip file in client-side code - even when you do no
| customization at all. Apparently that code which makes the
| zip (which I'm guessing is an external library) creates a
| corrupted one when run in Safari according to a comment
| buried in the JS.
|
| Maybe it really is a bug on Safari's part but creating
| custom zip archives is something which would be far saner
| to do on the server side in the first place.
| SSLy wrote:
| that'd include paying for computation time vs just static
| content on a CDN
| keyle wrote:
| yeah it's obviously a low priority for them but a monospace
| version of this font would be very interesting.
| jdknezek wrote:
| I made a custom Iosevka build by selecting glyph variants based
| on Atkison Hyperlegible.
|
| Iosevka: https://typeof.net/Iosevka
|
| "Hypersevka" build plans:
| https://github.com/jdknezek/Iosevka/blob/jdk/scripts/hyperse...
|
| Screenshots: https://imgur.com/7BZS3Pp
| https://imgur.com/sudNqWM
| AndyKluger wrote:
| Iosevka is absolutely wonderful!
|
| I have my own builds -- not based on AH's glyph choices, but
| also chosen to minimize glyph ambiguity.
|
| I'll mention another great legible monospace project: 0xProto
|
| ---
|
| Build: https://github.com/AndydeCleyre/archbuilder_iosevka/re
| leases...
|
| Screenshot Mono:
| https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/k46acrxl297.png
|
| Screenshot Mono with syntax highlighting:
| https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/l4nec9d8lm4.png
|
| Screenshot Proportional:
| https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/6yxkce8p6a7.png
|
| 0xProto: https://github.com/0xType/0xProto
| zamalek wrote:
| I really like the aesthetics of Iosevka, but the glyphs are
| really narrow - resulting in severe readability problems for
| me (I'm diagnosed dyslexic).
| letmeinhere wrote:
| I recently replaced mine and ruled out a bunch of others based
| on just two rules:
|
| - the zero must have a mark - the base of the lower case L must
| go to the right and not the left, for better distinction from
| the number one
| knowitnone wrote:
| Hack font is pretty good and doesn't collect your email
| https://github.com/source-foundry/Hack
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _Atkinson Hyperlegible Font_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32799872 - Sept 2022 (234
| comments)
|
| _Atkinson Hyperlegible - a font by the Braille Institute
| designed for legibility_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28010540 - July 2021 (1
| comment)
|
| _Atkinson Hyperlegible Font_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26011945 - Feb 2021 (86
| comments)
|
| _Atkinson Hyperlegible Font_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25154417 - Nov 2020 (10
| comments)
|
| _Atkinson Hyperlegible Font_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24853550 - Oct 2020 (3
| comments)
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| You know, this feature could be a little side bar on the top
| right, or just as a header for every post. (I assume its semi
| automated, but I would be happy to see it all the time)
| yesco wrote:
| Isn't that the point of the "past" button though? I've always
| assumed the purpose of Dang's "related" comments were to help
| bridge the discussion.
| deepfriedbits wrote:
| It seems as if the past button allows you to view a
| snapshot of the site on a given day, whereas Dang's bundles
| are previous instances of the topic/link being discussed on
| HN.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| There is also a past button for submissions
| xanth wrote:
| Thanks for sharing! I'd never thought to click through
| and see
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Me either! Maybe if dang included a "past" link in the
| comment, more of us would learn about it.
| deepfriedbits wrote:
| Oh wow, thanks!
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Before I post something on HN I always do a search to see if
| it has been posted recently. If it's more than 2-3 years old,
| I post it again in order for new users (and others who forget
| it) to notice it.
|
| There have been other similar suggestions i.e. when filling
| the information for a new submission to have an automatic
| duplicate search and produce a warning, but I've come to
| understand that adding features to the simple/lean HN page is
| not desired. Same goes for native dark mode (with having to
| load scripts/plugins/whatever).
|
| I can understand Feature Creep
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep) fears, but it
| seems that here we're doing the exact opposite :-)
| rolfus wrote:
| Agreed. The 3rd party app I'm using to read HN on mobile
| (Glider) has this feature and it's both useful and
| unobtrusive.
|
| Screenshot: https://www.imgpaste.net/image/SDoBg6
| BerislavLopac wrote:
| The "Refined Hacker News" extension for Chrome [0] and
| Firefox [1] adds something similar (among other things) to
| the bottom of every thread.
|
| [0] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/refined-hacker-
| news...
|
| [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/refined-
| hacke...
| al_borland wrote:
| Clicking the URL next to the post title provides this, at
| least for fairly unique pages. It's less useful when the link
| is from a popular news site.
| Terr_ wrote:
| I wonder if making old comments _too_ -easily available
| backfire by reducing new takes and fresh discussion. Probably
| not in this particular case, it seems like a potential risk
| when designing a social news site.
|
| P.S.: I choose to believe the neurons that instinctively
| throw up "but what if it's actually bad" represents a useful
| software design skill, rather than just a personality flaw.
| :p
| omoikane wrote:
| Atkinson Hyperlegible appears to slash their zeroes in the same
| direction as backslash, unlike all other fonts I have used where
| the slash in slashed zeroes have the same direction as a forward
| slash. Not sure if this was a deliberate design choice.
|
| https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Atkinson+Hyperlegible?prev...
|
| https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Inconsolata?preview.text=0...
| commodoreboxer wrote:
| Thanks for pointing this out. It looked weird to me, but I
| couldn't quite put my finger on why.
| zinekeller wrote:
| Probably since that it's intended for legibilty, it's to
| differentiate 0 from O.
| a_e_k wrote:
| I used a reverse-slashed zero in my programming font [1][2]
| for exactly that reason. I wanted it to be clearly distinct
| from an O with stroke (and by more than just the slash not
| extending past the bowl).
|
| [1] http://eastfarthing.com/luculent/
|
| [2] https://usemodify.com/fonts/luculent/
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _it 's to differentiate 0 from O_ [a letter used in Danish,
| Norwegian]
|
| most importantly it's to differentiate it from [?],
| mathematical null set.
|
| "computer people" feel this understandable need to
| differentiate their zeroes, but "CS-is-math people" are like
| "but don't use null set!" <-- y js s rl
| jansan wrote:
| Is the exclamation mark character for factorial different
| from ASCII x21?
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| No!
| IshKebab wrote:
| Hmm I think there are probably more Danish and Norwegian
| people than mathematicians writing about null sets.
| cue_the_strings wrote:
| No way, DK and NO aren't that big, and you learn about
| empty sets in HS in most of the world. I'd wager there
| are currently more Indian high schoolers than people in
| DK/NO.
| omnibrain wrote:
| In Germany (>20 years ago) we learned to use {}.
| IshKebab wrote:
| > you learn about empty sets in HS in most of the world
|
| lol no.
| zinekeller wrote:
| You're (probably) correct, considering that the specimen
| used O instead of [?] (see https://braileinstitute.app.bo
| x.com/s/gw2s8k5kfc6t1uabkiyqlc...), and the font do _not_
| have the null symbol.
|
| (also like the German commenter the null set is an empty
| set = {}, I only encountered [?] as diameter symbol,
| actually)
| snatchpiesinger wrote:
| I use DejaVu Sans Mono for programming, it places a dot
| inside 0.
| tempodox wrote:
| If you like DejaVu, you'll love BitstromWera Nerd Font
| [1] (looks almost the same, with some improvements). It
| works great with Starship [2].
|
| [1] https://www.nerdfonts.com/font-downloads
|
| [2] https://starship.rs
| daneel_w wrote:
| A truly underrated font.
| saaaaaam wrote:
| Possibly idiotic question: I'm fairly new to actually
| writing code myself in any thing more than a tinkering
| way. What do you use for programming where you can choose
| the typeface?
| nyantaro1 wrote:
| You mean a text editor where you can change your font? I
| am pretty sure most of them support that feature, VS Code
| just to mention one. Or do you mean other kind of tool?
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| My guess is that the other fonts do it to differentiate the
| slash zero and the Norwegian letter O.
|
| If that's true then AH's choice seems counterintuitive to me.
| notatoad wrote:
| to be clear, atkinson hyperlegible slashes the zero in the
| opposite direction to the O.
|
| https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Atkinson+Hyperlegible?prev.
| ..
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| Oh, ok. Thanks for pointing that out. In that case, I think
| their choice was justified to avoid confusion.
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| Theoretically, a slashed zero should not have the slash
| extending beyond the main body of the character, but in
| practice, especially in sloppy writing (when the slashed zero
| is more common) it often does. Also when designing a font for
| someone who has difficulties distinguishing character shapes,
| small differences like that may not be immediately obvious.
| Using a reverse slash immediately shows that it's a zero
| without any clashes.
|
| I think it's a fairly elegant solution at the slight cost of
| being a little unfamiliar (although the slashed zero itself is
| quite unfamiliar to most people).
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| I understand if this is supposed to be better for dyslexics, but
| the fact that the distinctions of the letters are so heavily
| emphasized makes it harder to read, since I generally read entire
| words at a time, not letters, and the individual letters are less
| important than how they look together in a word or a sentence.
| SSLy wrote:
| consider https://www.oliviaking.com/inclusive-sans
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Personally I find Comic Sans easiest to read, as dyslexic. I
| even use a monospace version of the font for coding and in the
| terminal.
| russfink wrote:
| Would that by chance be the Pointfree font?
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Dunno. It's just called Comic Mono.
|
| https://dtinth.github.io/comic-mono-font/
| tpoacher wrote:
| You might be interested to give Comic Code [0] a try
| instead.
|
| Unlike Comic Mono it is a paid font, but I find it a lot
| nicer to use/read.
|
| [0] https://tosche.net/fonts/comic-code
| yardshop wrote:
| I use Comic Code in my editors and console windows and
| really like it a lot. Adds some practical frivolity to
| the process!
| harimau777 wrote:
| I appreciate the double meaning of the name "Comic Code"!
| Well played!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority
| strunz wrote:
| Oof that k looks way too much like r to me
|
| EDIT: the font the website uses, not comic-code
| sphars wrote:
| Another alternative Comic Sans-inspired mono font is
| Serious Shanns (which is actually forked from Comic
| Mono): https://github.com/kaBeech/serious-shanns
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| That's fascinating do you have any insights as to why?
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I think it's related to how irregular the shapes of the
| letters are. The circles are all slightly bent out of shape
| in different ways, and the line strokes all have slightly
| varying slants.
|
| Most attempts at making a font try to make all that stuff
| as regular as possible, even the one in the article we're
| discussing does this.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Thank you that makes sense.
| ggm wrote:
| I am not dyslexic and I use this font too, because it's
| easier on my eyes. I find myself increasingly thinking
| "Courier" when I look at it and have to remind myself its
| not, and I chose it.
| ppseafield wrote:
| Likewise I've used Fantasque Sans Mono (related to Comic
| Sans) for a long time as a coding font.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| Have you tried any Dyslexic fonts, like
| https://opendyslexic.org/ ?
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| I'm not sure this font takes into consideration dyslexia as it
| seems, from what I read, focused on people with very bad
| eyesight.
| extra88 wrote:
| Yes, but it does include some features that seem to be
| included with dyslexia in mind. Letters like d and b have
| small differences so they're not mirror images of each other.
| burningChrome wrote:
| I like this idea, but for most companies, they've already decided
| on their fonts and many corporations already have strict
| guidelines on what fonts to use and many are either variants of
| popular fonts, or changed in some way that aligns with their
| branding.
|
| I still think its a good step forward.
| hinkley wrote:
| My go-to is Verdana based on previous empirical tests. It's
| bigger at the same pt size compared to other fonts, but if you
| size it down about 1/12th it is just as legible but at a higher
| characters per inch, which is good for trying to squeeze text
| into an interface, especially when that interface may be viewed
| by a group on a projector or screen share.
|
| I just tried to half-ass a similar test by editing the Google
| Font explorer UI to put them next to each other. Atkinson beats
| out Verdana for width, by about 4% (eyeballed and envelope math),
| however it's also 1 pixel taller per line at that size. So it's a
| more rectangular font. I'd have to think about how I'd want to
| use it, if I care more about lines per page or characters per
| column.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| If you're a Verdana fan, you might appreciate this write up I
| did on it some years back: https://neosmart.net/blog/tahoma-vs-
| verdana/
|
| It backs what you say!
| hinkley wrote:
| I don't recall why Tahoma didn't win. The letters may have
| been too close together for comfortable reading, resulting in
| the need for a larger point for the same comprehension. I
| mentioned above in another reply that we had one dissenter in
| the taste test, I think now that they may have voted for
| Tahoma.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Tahoma may be the HN font but for me Verdana is and forever
| will be "the Encarta font."
| wild_egg wrote:
| > My go-to is Verdana based on previous empirical tests.
|
| Do you have any handy links around this? I've a passing
| interest in information-dense UIs and font choice is a vital
| but often overlooked aspect of such interfaces. Would love to
| see how others evaluate such things.
| hinkley wrote:
| The empirical test was the entire team standing at the back
| of a conference room in shitty lighting basically taking a
| vision test. One person I believe voted for a different font,
| everyone else thought Verdana showed up best.
| ghssds wrote:
| Is there any peer-reviewed studies about this or are those claims
| unsubstantiated?
| barbegal wrote:
| No studies at all, all the claims are anecdotal at best.
| cormullion wrote:
| There is some research which suggests that the human brain
| "learns" to read an unfamiliar font reasonably fluently after
| about 30 minutes of use, and that recognition continues to
| improve with continued use. The well-known saying "we read best
| what we read most" suggests that a font itself contributes only
| partly towards readability - your personal habits and
| experience are also significant.
| aftbit wrote:
| I found it amusing that the end user license agreement is
| available only as a PDF on Box. That's not exactly the most
| accessible format but I got it downloaded. It appears to be a
| relatively straightforward license, prohibiting commercial resale
| of the font and its derivatives, but allowing it to be bundled
| with commercially sold software.
|
| https://braileinstitute.app.box.com/s/rin3vzegmcy7sil28yfqsl...
| hlieberman wrote:
| It's actually just the SIL font license, which is what
| basically every open source font uses. They just removed the
| preamble of it for some reason.
| Javalicious wrote:
| Yeah, I wish they would just keep the boilerplate OFL intact.
| I spent way too much time trying to figure out what the
| "real" license was, and if I could use it in my open source
| projects.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| It's obnoxious really, and borders on amateurism.
|
| If they want the OFL, then use the OFL. Don't make me try
| to understand yet another licence; I'm not a lawyer.
| Nemo_bis wrote:
| Infuriatingly, they didn't actually use the same text but
| they introduced multiple tiny changes so that you're forced
| to check word-by-word whether it's still an open/free
| license.
|
| Was it really necessary to replace "Original or Modified
| Versions" with "The Original Version or Modified Version", or
| "Reserved Font Name(s)" with "Reserved Typeface Name"? So
| necessary that you're willing to sacrifice potential reuse?
| JamesCoyne wrote:
| Google thinks it's OFL v1.1
| https://github.com/googlefonts/atkinson-
| hyperlegible?tab=rea... But it also has a Reserved Font Name,
| so probably OFL-1.1-RFN going by the SPDX License List
| https://spdx.org/licenses/
|
| Kinda too bad they don't just state which license they're
| aiming for.
| inktype wrote:
| I found it amusing that the license PDF does not use the font.
| (At least, the slashed 0 in the license pdf is not the
| backslashed 0 on the font web page.)
| dqv wrote:
| What screen reader did you use? NVDA didn't really choke on it.
| The dialog for downloading is weird though - it just announces
| a dialog and then sign up/login links (which are double
| labeled). The weird spacing that a lot of PDFs have makes the
| speech synthesizer slightly mispronounce words right before
| line breaks though. I would say the PDF itself is more
| accessible than the process provided to download it.
| nemetroid wrote:
| That's one ugly A, without any separation. The font looks nice in
| general though.
| Findecanor wrote:
| In my opinion as a native Swedish person (where that letter is
| part of our language), not separating the ring from the A is
| justified only when the font size is very small.
| zahlman wrote:
| Weirdly, I got eye strain from that page. I think it's not the
| font itself to blame, but the combination of its default size in
| my browser with being #000000 on #FFFFFF - too much contrast.
| elric wrote:
| Same here. That page is not very easy on the eyes, and that's
| with my brightness and contrast tuned for comfort.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| I appreciate that an expert institution designed a font for low
| vision readers with actual research. Every time I run an app that
| has OpenDyslexic as a font choice I die a little inside. It's the
| worst sort of "pretend to be helping" option. It actually is
| worse for reading than ordinary fonts.
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5629233/
| zharknado wrote:
| > "OpenDyslexic was compared to Arial and Times New Roman in
| three reading tasks: (a) letter naming, (b) word reading, and
| (c) nonsense word reading."
|
| Yikes, not a strong design IMO. I know very little about
| dyslexia, but reading individual words as a small child doesn't
| seem like a comprehensive way to measure "how dyslexic people
| read."
|
| Presumably the primary envisioned use-case for a specialized
| typeface like this is paragraphs of text, read by people who
| have the language skills to "think in paragraphs," even if the
| visual processing is a challenge.
|
| This is all armchair, I'd welcome correction or nuance.
| yababa_y wrote:
| I guess I'm the rare duckling who would report preferring
| OpenDyslexic! IMO it scans better, and is excellent when
| combined with beeline reader.
|
| When I was at the ages of the sample, my lexile scores were
| through the roof, compared to the sample here which has poor to
| middling reading ability (typical for dyslexia) -- i do not
| have dyslexia but still feels like OpenDyslexic makes it easier
| to read.
|
| The data in the study does not support your conclusion that it
| "actually is worse", unless i missed something in my
| interpretation? It seems to be a wash.
|
| This smaller N=3 study supports the efficacy of OpenDyslexic,
| using _actual reading tasks_ instead of the more artificial
| task in the study you provided:
| https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/tayjournal/issue/76493/11524...
| andai wrote:
| One of the testimonials implies that they've forced all websites
| to use this font, and it improved their experience significantly.
|
| I suspect that would be true of Arial, even! This has been my
| goal for some time, but no browser has such an option. (You can
| change the default font, but almost no website leaves it set to
| default, so it does nothing.)
| claytonwramsey wrote:
| In Firefox, you can the advanced font settings and uncheck
| "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your
| selections above" to force websites to use the default font.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Does this break icon fonts, or will icon fonts still display
| since the font you choose wouldn't have those ligatures
| defined?
| masfuerte wrote:
| An icon font ligature is just an entry in the font file
| that says to display a particular sequence of characters as
| a single glyph. In the absence of the font the browser
| doesn't know that the page designer (or the font designer)
| intended a ligature. If you force an alternative font the
| browser will just display the sequence of characters that
| made up the ligature.
|
| A few ligatures do have their own unicode code points, e.g.
| ffi, so the browser knows what is intended independent of
| the font. The ligatures used by icon fonts do not have
| their own code points.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > An icon font ligature is just an entry in the font file
| that says to display a particular sequence of characters
| as a single glyph.
|
| Most icon fonts use private-use codepoints, not
| ligatures. These codepoints have no standard glyph, so
| disabling site-specific fonts will make those characters
| fail to render at all or display placeholder characters
| (e.g. ).
|
| Thankfully, icon fonts are declining rapidly in usage -
| SVG icons are superior for most use cases.
|
| > A few ligatures do have their own unicode code points,
| e.g. ffi, so the browser knows what is intended.
|
| The precomposed ligature codepoints (e.g. U+FB00-FB06)
| only exist for compatibility with legacy encodings which
| included similar characters. They shouldn't be used in
| new documents. If you want text on a web page to use
| ligatures, use the CSS font-variant-ligatures property to
| control which ones are used. (And make sure to disable
| them on monospaced text!)
| _heimdall wrote:
| Its interesting that Firefox would offer a feature that
| disables all custom fonts rather than simply prioritizing
| the user's preferred font.
|
| It does add a bit of performance gain not loading the
| fonts, and it may be a small security improvement, but if
| the goal was usability/readability that seems like a huge
| miss.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| A preference based system would be almost impossible to
| maintain considering the literal infinite number of type
| faces out there (thousands plus more built every week).
|
| Add to that, this feature also needs to be understandable
| for non-technical people who might never have view a page
| source in their lives.
|
| Much as a granular system would be more powerful and
| preferable for the HN community, having a dumb toggle
| makes a lot more sense from Firefox's perspective.
| _heimdall wrote:
| I wasn't thinking granular control. It could work exactly
| like the existing preference with users picking a
| preferred font. That font is always set as the highest
| priority font and used for any characters it supports,
| but the page's custom fonts are still fallbacks and kept
| in the font stack for any characters missing from the
| user font.
|
| This would be helpful for icon fonts, but also for user
| preferred fonts that don't cover all language character
| sets.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Oh I see. Is that not how it works already?
|
| Apologies if I've completely misunderstood your comments
| _heimdall wrote:
| No problem at all! I haven't been by my desktop the last
| couple days but I do want to test it. I hope that's
| already how it works, that would make more sense to me
| than blocking all custom font loading (though that does
| have its purposes).
| hnlmorg wrote:
| > Thankfully, icon fonts are declining rapidly in usage
|
| I wouldn't be so sure about that. Resources like
| FontAwesome are still used heavily in VuePress and
| similar documentation generators.
| _heimdall wrote:
| I have one project using them, mainly because SVGs can be
| a bit of a pain to use in XSLT.
|
| edit: it may not be SVGs themselves. The icons on that
| site are repeated and I would reach for an SVG sprite
| that can be reused, I ran into issues with that working
| cross browser in XSLT - Firefox was actually the problem
| if I'm not mistaken.
| lelele wrote:
| Yes, it does break icon fonts.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| I know that safari lets (or at least used to let) you apply a
| custom CSS file on top of pages' own styles.
| gcr wrote:
| Chrome has that in the preferences. Don't even need a feature
| flag or user styles.
| jp57 wrote:
| I would like to see HN use this.
| thedrake wrote:
| Great seeing that they also have a great website score for Web
| Accessibility
| https://wave.webaim.org/report#/https://www.brailleinstitute...
| which shows a near perfect Web Accessibility Score.
|
| Gives credence that they do take it seriously.
| dqv wrote:
| Yeah, these tests are great for finding obvious mistakes, but
| it can't help with improving UX past a certain point. I get the
| sense that a lot of vision-impaired folks are so busy fighting
| for bare minimum accessibility that they don't get the
| opportunity to ask for better UX. As an example in NVDA, go to
| heading level 2 "Unique Design Features", advance past the two
| sentences, right after "...make each one unique", you will hear
| "beeightohoh", text, then "oneaiaiell", text, then
| "eeeffpeecue", and so on. It's like Mojibake [0] for screen
| readers. Or maybe not - I don't know because I am sighted!
|
| I was thinking about how I'd fix it if it were an issue. A
| person who doesn't have enough visual acuity to see the
| distinctness of the glyphs might still want to understand the
| specific examples of normally-ambiguous glyphs. I came up with
| this, but it still isn't the best and probably breaks
| expectations: <style type="text/css">
| .sr-only { border: 0 !important;
| clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px) !important;
| -webkit-clip-path: inset(50%) !important; clip-
| path: inset(50%) !important; height: 1px
| !important; overflow: hidden !important;
| margin: -1px !important; padding: 0 !important;
| position: absolute !important; width: 1px
| !important; white-space: nowrap !important;
| } </style> <figure>
| <div> <span class="sr-only">(distinct
| glyphs)</span>B8<span class="sr-only">(out of distinct
| glyphs)</span> <span aria-hidden="true">
| </span> <span class="sr-only">(distinct
| glyphs)</span>O0<span class="sr-only">(out of distinct
| glyphs)</span> </div>
| <figcaption> <strong>Unambiguous
| Letterforms<span class="sr-only">:</span></strong><br> Letters
| have received special care to ensure they're legible and clear.
| </figcaption> </figure>
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojibake
| dundercoder wrote:
| Visually impaired guy here, always excited to see things that
| make my life easier. Also great that it shows blindness is a
| spectrum, not a binary condition.
| fsckboy wrote:
| open letter to all font people: You have a skill, design, which
| is a skill I don't have, so I am glad you are working on fonts
| and not me. A beautiful font is a thing to behold, it decreases
| stress and leaves us _muy tranquilo-OOOOMMMM_
|
| however: when I am in a spreadsheet, trying to choose a typeface
| & font for one column, my goal is NEVER to suddenly expand either
| the width, or the height, or the amount of hover over the
| baseline, or fabulous quantities of descender or ascender, or
| linespacing or i-don't-know,-you-tell-me-the-terminology, I don't
| want your typeface to shockingly change its alignment to all the
| other text I have
|
| and that includes "oh, just select a different pointsize"; if
| things are the same pointsize, then they should be able to sit
| next to one another; I know it's not your fault, but you know
| whose fault it really really isn't? MINE
|
| I really want to use your typefaces; don't make it so hard
| atoav wrote:
| I agree that fonts should not differ too much in size and other
| important metrics, but if you select a _condensed_ font for
| example expectations are that you can fit more letters into the
| same line.
|
| Now of every font would do equal spacing (something that your
| spreadsheet software could just implement, btw.) what would the
| point be of having different fonts?
|
| As you are running the system ypu could also just make a
| selection of particularily equal fonts and remove the rest, if
| that annoys you.
| xutopia wrote:
| I have a feeling I'm looking at Comic Sans... and the idea that
| Comic Sans might actually be a really legible font dawns on me. I
| don't know what to believe anymore.
| andatki wrote:
| What a name! - A dot Atkinson
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| The "clear uprights" feature is something I've been shouting
| about for a long time. It's inexcusable that commonly-used fonts
| like Verdana (right here on HN) can't distinguish between l and
| I.
| mastazi wrote:
| I have an issue with the lowercase q which looks a lot like a
| lowercase a. In many other fonts, these two letters look quite
| different and it's unlikely that you would mix them up.
| mzs wrote:
| qu vs a
| thomas-st wrote:
| It looks a bit like a handwritten Polish a
| rasguanabana wrote:
| For sure string like "zqb" would give me a pause with this
| letterform, because it looks a lot like "zab". Maybe it would
| be clearer in surrounding text, though.
| endverbraucher wrote:
| Also consider "Atkinson Hyperlegible Pro" an updated and slightly
| extendend Version: https://github.com/tryoxiss/atkinson-
| hyperlegible-pro
| dartharva wrote:
| I am astigmatic. I tried taking off my glasses and reading this
| page side-by-side against a Substack article zoomed in at the
| same font size at a distance. I could not make any difference in
| ease of reading or legibility, I struggled roughly equally for
| both of them. What am I missing?
| atoav wrote:
| Nothing. Most typefaces are already pretty good at being
| legible, so we are talking about marginal gains here. A font
| like that where usually similar-looking characters are easily
| distinguished shines more when applied e.g. in forms or other
| applications where precise input is required.
| hypercube33 wrote:
| Thats interesting because I arrived at the same conclusion.
|
| At first glance for me it really seemed like its a font strait
| out of a elementary grade level textbook. Maybe its the website
| layout, maybe its that the font is huge and spaced the same,
| I'm not sure.
|
| As far as easier to read, I am on the fence versus monospaced
| computer fonts if its any better or not. I wonder what their
| research behind this is but the website started to bug me so I
| didnt dig deeper personally
| Popeyes wrote:
| I find this with a lot of assistive fonts, that they have
| claims but no research that says "Yes, this makes a dramatic
| difference". For example, the OpenDyslexic font I've never seen
| any research that it make any more difference yet I see people
| act like it's an answer. Big text is easier to read.
| MavisBacon wrote:
| I attended a talk given on this font at an assistive
| technology conference recently. This seems to actually have a
| body of evidence demonstrating its benefits in specific use
| cases. Also from a design standpoint it truly is superior to
| alternatives. Things like dyslexia fonts are largely
| considered entirely ineffective in the field
| pjerem wrote:
| I can't see without my glasses so I didn't try. But I have a
| huge myopia, not perfectly corrected astigmatism (like, it's
| fine but glasses can't correct it perfectly) and on top of
| that, I have amblyopia (which you can approximate by : my brain
| learned to use only one eye).
|
| And I do find Atkinson hyperlegible more ... legible. Not life
| changing since my vision is still ok and I'm still young.
|
| And I find it interesting because with my mix of conditions, my
| issues aren't seeing clearly (I see clearly with my glasses)
| but eye strain. I can have a day where I see clearly in the
| morning and blurry at night. Anything that reduces this strain
| changes my life. And, maybe it's placebo, but I feel like this
| font helps.
| chronogram wrote:
| I don't know if it's actually easier to read in a sentence
| compared to the standard of Frutiger and Frutiger-likes. That's
| what you'll likely see on your medicine packaging and train-
| and road signs. It does try to be unambiguous by
| differentiating glyphs, which can be helpful with some
| standalone words.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Subtle differences are not that easy to compare. You would have
| to test reading and comprehension speed and also while skimming
| and searching information.
|
| If some font, color, or UI feature provides 1-5% improvement,
| it's huge because it accumulates over long term, but it's hard
| to notice immediately.
| hinkley wrote:
| What fonts do you like?
| dartharva wrote:
| In general? Roboto comes to mind. Hack for monospace.
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| This is a sans serif font. I thought that impairs readability in
| blocks of text.
| mungoman2 wrote:
| Nice, but kerning seems off. See for example word "Tails" in the
| article. a and i should be closer.
| notorandit wrote:
| The font itself is not enough for good readability.
|
| So-called "UI/UX" designer are making a lot of fancy work to make
| things illegible. Contrast between background (aka "paper") and
| foreground (aka "ink") is going down and down. So, no matter the
| font of choice, text is becoming less readable (and less
| relevant) also because of color choices. While video and audio
| contents is getting more and more attention.
| Maxion wrote:
| Contrast is not the end-all-be-all I have pretty severe
| astigmatism, and when contrast is too high I get quite severe
| visual artifacts. For me text is more legible if the contrast
| is a bit tamed.
| leptons wrote:
| There's plenty of middle ground between too-artsy low
| contrast light color fonts on light color background and
| high-contrast text.
| akvadrako wrote:
| Too much contrast is hard to read, though it also depends on
| the quality of your monitor and the ambient lighting. OLEDs
| have infinite contrast ratios with black text or backgrounds,
| which is too much.
|
| For example when I first saw this new CV I thought, "that's
| really easy on the eyes".
|
| https://worrydream.com/
| bcoates wrote:
| Generally OLEDs don't use off for black outside of special-
| effect low power modes. The display only has stable contrast
| above some threshold brightness that in a dark viewing
| environment is going to be noticeably brighter than off, and
| it looks awful below that. The #000 point is set well
| brighter than that level.
| akvadrako wrote:
| I don't agree it noticable. My OLED screens all look the
| same as off when all black in dark rooms. And if you look
| at specs and display reviews they typically report contrast
| ratios of 1M:1.
| hinkley wrote:
| There's a trick I picked up on one project and made lots of use
| of in the one I mentioned elsewhere in this thread. Everyone at
| that time was using charcoal black (#333) text on light grey
| backgrounds (#e0e0e0 or #ddd) or even middle grey backgrounds
| (#ccc), or white text on dark grey or highly saturated
| backgrounds and it was a mess.
|
| You add a 1 pixel radius, zero offset 70% opacity white shadow
| to dark text, or the same shadow in black to inverse (light)
| text, and the letters pop without the shadow being noticeable
| except under zoom. The page takes a little bit longer to
| render, but at least you can read it despite the designer's
| attempt to sabotage basic UX principles.
|
| The translucency makes it work on other colors as well, if you
| have color coded labels for instance, like a dark blue bar with
| grey text.
| me_jumper wrote:
| I'm personally not sure if I like the font in bodies of text, but
| I adore it for presentations.
|
| You don't have long texts on slides, and everything is very
| distinct. I find it especially helpful, as many setups where one
| presents can be suboptimal (e.g., bad lighting, obstructed views,
| warped surface that is projected on, ...). Which is where this
| font shines not only for people with impaired vision, but for
| everyone.
| hinkley wrote:
| I haven't needed to optimize displays for projectors for some
| time, but when I did I was shocked how long 1024x768 survived.
| If you were lucky you'd get a 1280 pixel projector. And almost
| invariably, any shade of grey lighter than E7E7E7 was
| indistinguishable from white. People like to put light gray
| lines in tabular data to help the eye track across. It
| disappears and then people keep interrupting the meeting flow
| to ask questions about the data they were meant to be able to
| answer with their eyeballs. Though once in a while they'd put
| light grey in a bar chart and then they were fucked.
|
| They are also all ever so slightly out of focus. Or dust on the
| lens. Or projecting on an orange peel wall instead of a screen.
|
| I'm curious how things have improved in let's say the last ten
| years. Still hot garbage?
| me_jumper wrote:
| Depends on where you are, I guess. I work at a University in
| Germany, and most meeting rooms are either 1) _very_ old and
| exactly as you 've described, or 2) updated in the last few
| years and actually usable. There doesn't seem to be an in-
| between.
| hinkley wrote:
| I think they run those things until they break and then buy
| what they can still find. What's "good" these days? I see
| expensive ones that I think most businesses would probably
| balk at buying. 1080p?
| atoav wrote:
| if you look at all the specs the choice probably boils
| down to (A) getting something damn bright in 1080p or
| WUXGA or (B) something in 4K that isn't as bright. And by
| that point personally I would ask why or whether 4k is
| really needed for the application.
|
| More brightness/better contrast is probably the more
| important feature for university applications as it
| allows you to see stuff better even if we are not in a
| black-walled darkened cinema space.
|
| Everything in 4k with decent colors and high brightness
| costs a fortune.
|
| But a DCI conform 4k Laser projector is really a view to
| behold. If only it wasn't so damn expensive.
| atoav wrote:
| Mediatech guy for a university in Germany here. The reason
| for that is that the average lifetime for installation
| projectors is something between 8 and 12 years, after that
| either the power supply dies or it gets hard finding light
| fixtures.
|
| Either way most universities only feel compelled to spend
| money when something breaks. I wish that was different, as
| it makes my job very stressful at times, especially when
| multiple things break within a small time span.
| regularfry wrote:
| > You don't have long texts on slides, and everything is very
| distinct.
|
| Writing as I do from inside an organisation where the standard
| seems to be to communicate through meetings where someone reads
| out the text on a powerpoint slide, I can say that this is
| nothing if not optimistic.
| me_jumper wrote:
| fair, maybe I'm too optimistic or too privileged in that
| regard.
|
| Doesn't change my other points through ;)
| queuebert wrote:
| I'll be glad if the people I work with just stop using Comic
| Sans.
| BaudouinVH wrote:
| That font is not the only designed for legibility. Luciole is
| another one :
|
| https://luciole-vision.com/luciole-en.html
| mikae1 wrote:
| https://www.lexend.com is an alternative.
| Dansvidania wrote:
| i just want to say the terms and condition were 2 pages of pretty
| simple language and this was probably the first time I encounter
| term in such a consumable form. cheers.
| Diti wrote:
| The most legible font I have ever seen - and I wish someone would
| make an open-source version of it, and a monospace version, along
| with more glyphs - is Heinemann Special. No two characters look
| the same, and the font is really pleasant to read. No
| [back]slashed-zero, though.
| chronogram wrote:
| A monospace version of a font designed to have every glyph be
| different is DP Sans Mono:
| https://www.pgdp.net/wiki/DP_Sans_Mono
| tokai wrote:
| Reading through their license it is very much open source. It
| gives the rights to "to use, study, copy, merge, embed, modify,
| redistribute, and sell modified and unmodified copies" and thus
| covers the requirements of open source.
| cprecioso wrote:
| > covers the requirements of open source
|
| There's no source
| tokai wrote:
| Its not a program so no there is no source. What is your
| point?
| snthpy wrote:
| Is there a Nerdfont version of this that I can use for my
| terminal?
| globular-toast wrote:
| Sure, it's readable, but the font size is also set to be twice as
| big as what I set my font size as (2rem) so I would expect that.
| Assuming everyone sets their font to what is acceptable for them,
| what is the reason for setting this page to 2x that size?
| msla wrote:
| I just like that it's normally legible, in that it distinguishes
| AI from Al and such, which normal sans-serif fonts rarely do. It
| does this by having serifs, yes, which seems like a lost art
| among the Usability Experts of the world.
| AlanYx wrote:
| Is the tight kerning before the lowercase letter "l" intentional?
| I find it hard to believe that's the optimum choice for
| readability. Words like "title" seem like they're harder to read
| than average because there's almost no space between the t and
| the l.
| bayindirh wrote:
| If you look at other letters, the i's kerning is relieved by
| other letters' tails or kerning. The opening text contains the
| word institute and it's neither cramped nor hard to read w.r.t.
| other text.
| AlanYx wrote:
| I don't have an issue with the "i", it's the "l" that is
| tight.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| I find it easier to distinguish "O" and "0" in fonts that
| distinguish between capital letter "O" and number zero "0" by
| putting a dot or something inside. It is already annoying, when
| you need to guess based on width or other shape between the 2,
| because that assumes, that you are seeing both at the same time,
| looking back and forth between them.
|
| Additionally "I" and "l" look way too similar.
|
| So I think "Unambiguous Letterforms" in this case not necessarily
| true.
| dylanowen wrote:
| Maybe the font didn't load correctly but it solves both those
| problems from what I can see.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Ah that would be an explanation. I simply assumed they would
| be using pictures and did not check, whether I can highlight
| single letters. It's a pity then, since I am not loading
| fonts from a random third party, especially not from a bad
| actor like Google. The site also never asked me for consent,
| so it should not be including Google stuff anyway.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| This is the sort of thing I'd love to see Tentacruel look at. His
| videoes briefly covered iconography and fonts and I'd bet he'd
| have some cool insights about this font.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| That q is too similar to single story a for my taste (even if
| this font uses double story a/a). But otherwise it's the most
| aesthetically pleasing of the legibility-oriented fonts :)
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