Thread by @GarethFW

Hi @jared_w_smith I really enjoyed your talk on typographic accessibility however there are a couple of things I’d like to pick up that I think would are worth a discussion at least.
The main one was about dyslexia. There is so much misinformation about this condition.

Despite the cultural definitions which seem to include unrelated syndromes and traits, Developmental Dyslexia to give its proper name is a developmental disorder to do with phonological pricessing, see jnnp.bmj.com/content/74/12/…

The definition becomes muddied by psychologists who diagnose the symptoms, which could be caused by other things and attribution of unrelated traits and syndromes such as Irlen and mirroring, where there are as many dyslexic and non-dyslexic cases.

We all mirror as small children which is part of our developmental process and by about six years old most of us grow out of it. Some take longer and a minority never do. This isn’t dyslexia, but if you are also dyslexic it compounds the problem.

The same with Irlen. It’s not dyslexia and it gets wrongly attributed or called ‘visual dyslexia’ which is just making stuff up. There are also associated traits which are present to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the individual.
irlensyndrome.org/what-is-irlen-…

There is not a great deal of research or understanding about them, but they could be additional syndromes, they could be compensatory or directly related to the same developmental disorder. One thing we know is that they exist.

This again gets muddied when there are additional developmental disorders present.
I am diagnosed Dyslexic and ADHD, there may be others in there TBC. How I think and process information is one thing, how it is attributed is another. They impact each other.

So I have issues processing phonetics as well as having attention and short term memory issues.
Reading is an absolute nightmare.
Back to my point, dyslexia is not referring to a bundle of symptoms, it is a condition that symptoms are wrongly attributed to.

These impact on my skills development as a reader and I still have to read with that inner voice. The same with the majority of dyslexics. So readability and legibility of a font is paramount.
This brings me to another point about familiarity.

You are absolutely right that the greater exposure we have to a font the easier it is to process, however not all fonts start from the same level of readability. The same goes with typography, it’s all usability lipstick on an accessibility pig… 😉

What you say is true but not comparable between fonts. Common does not equal performant, but it does help.
If it was true then Helvetica, Comic Sans and Times would be the most performant fonts, and we have data to show that is definitely not the case.

Because most dyslexics do not develop the reading skills of mainstream readers, phonetics stay a big part of their reading experience. There is a reason that there are higher instances of dyslexia amongst native English rather than German or Italian populations.

This is down to the opacity of the language. German is a transparent language in that there are no homophones. One collection of letters, one sound and one meaning.
English is chaos and as our challenge is phonetic the barriers are more pronounced depending on the language.

So font choice is important as it is the foundation to the dyslexic reading experience. It is our pig.

I know this is rather general and a bit over simplified, but Twitter, and I felt it was important to point out.

There are a couple of other things that need consideration. Firstly the research that identified saccadic eye movement was done with mainstream readers on long form reading experiences, such as articles and books. Readers have a flow and an expected level of reading skill.

This is relevant to about 2/3 of the population who have those skills and is not necessarily universal. It is also worth pointing out that websites and applications are not formatted like books, so for interface design this is not applicable.

There is also plenty of commercial research, not public domain, that shows serfs (depending on the other font features) can make this more efficient. Which is why Bookerly is a serif design, with lots of other efficiency features... all serif fonts are not equal.

Bookerly was designed to both reduce fatigue and increasing reading speeds. The faster you finished the book, and the less fatigued you feel, the quicker you buy and start on the next one. It's a commercial consideration for supporting high volume readers.

Back to closed caption UX, there are three main ways readers use them, none of which are supported by the saccadic model, and we have a user experience determined by the limitations of teletext, a long dead technology.

1. Users who are hearing first. They might be hearing impaired or have a cognitive condition. They use captions to fill in the gaps in both spoken language and (depending on the UX) add context to the words, such as who is speaking and whether they are being sarcastic or not?

In eye tracking studies they are taking in action, facial expressions, body language etc, and using captions to fill in the gaps.

2. Lip readers. Generally fixating on the faces of speakers, which is why news readers and reporters should face forwards and not have beards, scarves, masks, microphones etc. in front of their mouths.
Like the first group they drop into the captions to fill in the gaps.

3. The caption first users, who have the worst UX because they have to read the words first and then look-up dropping out of reading to try and capture speaker information, facial expressions, body language and action, missing much of the context surrounding the words.

All require a visual experience that is word efficient, is delivered verbatim and supports the best readability and legibility practices, because every lost millisecond is lost information. Which is why, generally speaking, closed and open caption design is not fit for purpose.

In conclusion, everything you said was valid, but there are many caveats in the context of the research and the experience of reading that you cited.
Very, very glad that you did not recommend any fonts, although I wholeheartedly disagree with @ericwbailey about Comic Sans ;)

I guess I'm going to have to turn this thread into an article. Now I need a title that sums up issues with preconceptions, dyslexia, closed caption UX and reading experiences.
Suggestions please!
#a11y #uxdesign #DyslexicThinking #dyslexia #Neurodivergent

Or is it familiarity lipstick on an accessibility pig... I'm going to need a while to work that one out.
@jared_w_smith ;)