Closed letter counters impair recognition

Informing the Design of an Accessible Arabic Typeface: A Visual Analysis to Identify Letterform Features of Dyslexia-Friendly Typefaces

“…In contrast, Open Dyslexic had the most closed counters due to its non-uniform stroke and weight distribution, which mainly existed in the bottom half of the letters. The analysis of counters revealed that the findings from Sylexiad and FS Me typefaces support the argument in the existing literature that open counters enhance letter recognition [78]. Therefore, both attributes will be mapped to the Arabic script by adopting open counters as well as apertures for the typeface prototype design.…”

“…Typefaces with open apertures like FS Me and Sylexiad support better character recognition. This design choice aligns with prior research by Beier and Oderkerk [78], emphasising the readability benefits of open apertures in typefaces. Open counters also improve letter recognition.…”

“…In typography, an aperture pertains to the partially enclosed space within letters, while a counter denotes the fully enclosed space within a letter. The rationale behind incorporating this parameter lies in the fact that legibility studies frequently encompass an evaluation of the degree of letterform openness, presented in apertures and counters, as an important variable [78][79][80].…”

The effect of serifs and stroke contrast on low vision reading

“…Consequently, there is a need for maximizing the readability of the fonts used to produce text. It is well documented that different fonts have different reading thresholds for both people with normal (Beier et al, 2018;Beier & Oderkerk, 2022, 2019a, 2019bBernard et al, 2016;Dobres et al, 2017;Sawyer et al, 2017) and low vision Mansfield et al, 1996;Tarita-Nistor et al, 2013;Xiong et al, 2018). Font styles vary with respect to a number of stylistic features, such as width and spacing of letters, stroke contrast and the lines at the end of strokes known as serifs (see Fig.…”