What about Special Fonts for Kids with Dyslexia or Other Reading Problems?

Nadia--

I think it is possible that a mixture of fonts early on could confuse the occasional young reader for a very brief time. When I taught beginning readers, one of the programs that I worked with did a lot of that kind of font switching. The kids seemed to enjoy it. Of course, part of what a learner has to learn is that fonts don't matter in decoding or meaning--we have to come to see all those different formats as equivalents. I'd say don't worry it should be fine.

Edith--
As you know there are different print styles (or fonts) that can be used. One of them, the D'nealian, is aimed at being a precursor to handwriting--the idea being that the more the font is like cursive the easier it will be to learn cursive. I know of no research on that, but personally don't give it a lot of credence. I've never noticed children having that much trouble with that part of the transition from manuscript hand to cursive.

tim

Owen-

Your take aways make sense to me. The spacing thing is interesting, but not terribly helpful given that most beginning reading materials tend to use relatively larger fonts with more spacing. Even when transcribing children's language experience stories most people use bigger letters and put a greater amount of space between words than they might if they were printing for themselves. Of course, older dyslexics/disabled readers may be beginning readers, but without texts with such spacing. I don't think it is a deal breaker, but it likely makes it easier to distinguish words (in the examples in the journal articles cited in my blog, I found the non-spaced versions to be uncomfortable--the letters, to me, seemed closer together than in usual text).
tim

Well, I guess I’ll stop using comic sans.

I thought this said special foods for kids with dyslexia! So what about for teachers, lol?

Thank you for helping to dispel the widely held belief that dyslexia is a visual problem! One of my doc students recently completed a dissertation that found, among other things, that this belief is still alarmingly common among teachers.

Yes! There is only one route that proves to be effective. We have to dig in and teach kids to read. This is so powerful.

Teachers are not opticians so I really do wish they would stop telling children it's babyish to use their finger when reading. No optician in the world would tell a child under 8 years old NOT to use their finger as it helps their weak eye muscles to focus. I have seen a whole generation with poor eye convergence since our Education Authority imposed this silly rule. Children will remove their finger from under the words when they are ready to ... regardless of font.

I'm dyslexic. And things are not so black and white. I'm not convinced these studies yet have control over all of the independent variables in their statistical analysis. I think they are correct for the mean data and may also be true for children learning to read. Maybe not true for proficient high functioning dyslexics on their bad to fair days. (My reading ability fluctuates).

On a bad day I can't comprehend text. On a medium day I'm between struggling and fair. A good day, no issue, and can read academic peer reviewed journals.

On the fair to bad days Times New Roman is unreadable/no comprehension. As are narrow columns of text or lists with single words or short sentences.

Dyslexie was useful on older PC screens before they went 3k or 4k on my fair days but made no difference to Arial when printed as the print resolution is a lot better. Windows plays tricks for text on older screens to make text look smoother which made things more difficult for me to read. On these older screens from 15 to 5 years ago I could see the pixels.

Text and background colour also impacts me on those fair days and can make the difference to comprending text or not.

On my bad and good days, font and colour make no difference. On my fair days they can make the difference in being able to work or not as my profession is all numbers, reading and writing. I'm a PhD qualified engineer who writes evidenced based policy for State Government.

Also note on my bad to fair days I can not read Times New Roman. It was one of the curses of my PhD pre the current digital age. I spent many days copying academic journal articles letter by letter to convert the font to my handwriting so I could later read the article once copied.

The psychologist recommended to me by SPELD NSW put some of this due to a level of distractability.

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I have many students, and a son, who tell me that it is difficult to read certain fonts (especially ones with squiggly lines found in graphic novels). They say they make the words jump on the page. Some do make the words appear closer together which makes it harder to distinguish one word from another. So the question is not necessarilly speed but frustration and difficulty level. That should matter and count for something. These students are fighting a uphill battlem so if a particular font works better for them, let them use it or the teacher shold use it as well.

Font matters for the 25% of dyslexics that have intact phonological awareness skills. The average age of Tinkers subjects was 18 and they were not dyslexic. The reading brain of an 18 year old will look much different than that of a five year old with dyslexia. I call it the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom effect- we explicitly teach a print type font when teaching phonics and alphabetic principle but don’t explicitly teach text font. They look very different and on fMRI studies dyslexics have higher activity in the right mid temporal lobe an area linked to spatial rotation. We must teach a variety of fonts not just one for these students and since we don’t know who will need it we should teach it to all learners- it’s not overkill it’s comprehensive teaching to ensure generalisation.