Dyslexie font does not benefit reading in children with or without dyslexia

Abstract

In two experiments, the claim was tested that the font “Dyslexie”, specifically designed for people with dyslexia, eases reading performance of children with (and without) dyslexia. Three questions were investigated. (1) Does the Dyslexie font lead to faster and/or more accurate reading? (2) Do children have a preference for the Dyslexie font? And, (3) is font preference related to reading performance? In Experiment 1, children with dyslexia (n = 170) did not read text written in Dyslexie font faster or more accurately than in Arial font. The majority preferred reading in Arial and preference was not related to reading performance. In Experiment 2, children with (n = 102) and without dyslexia (n = 45) read word lists in three different font types (Dyslexie, Arial, Times New Roman). Words written in Dyslexie font were not read faster or more accurately. Moreover, participants showed a preference for the fonts Arial and Times New Roman rather than Dyslexie, and again, preference was not related to reading performance. These experiments clearly justify the conclusion that the Dyslexie font neither benefits nor impedes the reading process of children with and without dyslexia.

Inter-letter spacing, inter-word spacing, and font with dyslexia-friendly features: testing text readability in people with and without dyslexia

“…This was an expected result since in this unusual spacing condition, it is difficult to segment sentences into words because the sizes of the (increased) inter-letter and the (default) inter-word spacing appeared similar. However, contrary to several studies (Bachmann, 2013;Marinus et al, 2016;Zorzi et al, 2012), but in line with other previous research (Damiano, Gena, & Venturini, 2019;Kuster et al, 2017), a general advantage in reading speed due to increased spacing, in both its components, was not found either in children with dyslexia or in typical readers. The difference between default and increased spacing employed in the present study was smaller than that used in the study by Zorzi et al (2012), where the authors, using exceptionally wider spacing, found a positive effect on fluency in Italian and French readers.…”

“…Both children with dyslexia and typical readers did not show differences in reading performance in terms of reading speed and accuracy when they read texts written with the DF letterform or with the standard letterform. These results could be interpreted as additional evidence (see Kuster et al, 2017;Wery & Diliberto, 2017) that the particular letterform of the dyslexiafriendly fonts, which includes dedicated serifs, longer ascenders/descenders, and asymmetry of characters similar in shape, did not produce any advantage in reading over the letterform of common fonts.…”

Validity and Reliability of the Dyslexia Checklist for Chinese Children

“…Even though the remaining item 5, “enlarging the size of font or marking where you read can improve reading,” had a poor factor loading, we did not removed it because the index did not become better after removing it. Additionally, there was evidence suggesting the larger font size can help children with dyslexia to improve reading speed ( Kuster et al, 2017 ). Thus, we believed that the DCCC would make more sense by including it.…”

Fonts for Improvement of the Reading Abilities in Persons with Dyslexia

“…The readability of a text depends on a large number of the features of the font in which the text is written. The features are always interrelated and generally, they include: character size, space between the characters and rows and shape of the font (Kuster, van Weerdenburg, Gompel and Bosman, 2018). Research shows that the fonts with bigger size are much more easily readable (Perea, Panadero, Moret-Tatay & Gómez, 2012).…”