In the past, Dyslexia was referred to as a disease, a difficulty in reading as a result of brain damage, and it would often go undetected and misunderstood as a deficiency in intellect. But as science advanced so did our understanding of Dyslexia as a common condition that afflicts a large number of people globally. Often called a Specific Learning Difficulty, estimates suggest that over ten million people have Dyslexia in India, and that’s just the cases that have been diagnosed, but the figures may be even higher as it’s said that multilingualism, as is common in our country, may impact the difficulty.

Difficulty in reading in undiagnosed Dyslexia can be a frustrating task and it’s a lot more than just being unable to differentiate between certain letters. Dyslexic individuals have a tendency to view letters as three-dimensional objects and with several alphabets similar in shape and structure it’s easy to jumble them up. But the condition is no comment on a person’s intellectual abilities, when several of the most successful people in the world today, and in the past, have had Dyslexia, including Einstein and close to 50 percent of all NASA employees. Using his insights as someone with the condition, Dutch graphic designer Christian Boer has developed a unique font that can help Dyslexic people read with ease. The typeface is called Dsylexie and it magnifies, so to speak, the individual differences between alphabets to make them easier to identify. For example, the font emboldens the bottom of letters giving them more definition, making it easier to recognise which end is right side up. The alphabet C is widened to reduce its similarity to the letter E, and certain alphabets are slanted.

“Traditional fonts are designed solely from an aesthetic point of view, which means they often have characteristics that make characters difficult to recognize for people with dyslexia,” his website reads. “Oftentimes, the letters of a word are confused, turned around or jumbled up because they look too similar.” In an independent survey conducted to see the use of this new font, almost three quarters of student participants read with fewer mistakes. The font is not only enabling those with Dyslexia to read but also helping them to determine if individuals have the condition or not. On Dyslexie’s official website sample pages that can be downloaded and used to check if it really makes a difference in a person’s reading ability. Dyslexie can also be downloaded for free and installed on your computers, with different versions available for schools and businesses.

For more information and to download Dyslexie you can visit the official website site.

Image from Dyslexie Font on Vimeo.