In an earlier article I looked at Intel One Mono, a new monospaced font designed for low-vision and legally blind coders and developers. In this article I’d like to expand the topic and look at fonts intended for a wider range of publications than those calling for a monospaced typeface.
A widely-cited article on type design, Fonts Designed for Macular Degeneration: Impact on Reading, compared two new (as of 2018) typefaces designed specifically for low-vision readers—the free Eido, and the for-sale Maxular Rx (also available on Adobe Fonts)—with the mainstream typefaces Times New Roman, Helvetica and the monospaced Courier. The fonts were compared and tested for how they impacted maximum reading speed, critical print size and reading acuity. They concluded that Maxular Rx was effective in improving critical print size and reading acuity, and Eido assisted reading acuity, but neither typeface was superior to Courier in improving all three characteristics of reading and legibility. Even more important than letterform design, the researchers concluded, was letter spacing, meaning a monospaced font is particularly effective for low-vision readers.
Even though I am a monospaced font devotee, I nonetheless know there is a problem at this point: as type designer Matthew Butterick—designer of the highly-regarded typewriter typeface Triplicate—notes, “Compared to proportional fonts, monospaced fonts are harder to read. And because they take up more horizontal space, you’ll always get fewer words per page with a monospaced font.” This means using a monospaced font in publications will decrease reading speed and acuity for non-vision-impaired readers, and print publications will require more pages for content, resulting in more expensive print runs.
Two open-source font projects have been created to address the need to create typefaces accessible for all readers. The older of the two, Lexend, was created in 2004 (and updated and expanded in 2018 and 2021) and designed to reduce cognitive noise, improve character recognition and increase reading speed. Further, the variable version of Lexend incorporates the differently-spaced families of the Lexend type system into a single font that can fluctuate based on the reader’s needs. The central idea is that “a font, much like the prescription in a pair of eyeglasses, should change based on the reader’s unique needs.”
Lexend has also been expanded as Readex Pro, adding Naskh-style Arabic to the core Lexend family.
While Lexend’s strength is its palette of differently-spaced families, it lacks the italics needed by designers of publications using complex typographical systems. This need is addressed by the Braille Institute of America’s recent Atkinson Hyperlegible type family. Atkinson Hyperlegible lacks Lexend’s spacing options, perhaps making it less useful for readers with significant vision issues, but its combination of proportional spacing and upright and italic typefaces with clearly differentiated letterforms might make it the best option for publications to be used by readers across the vision spectrum.
The different options for legible publication design—particularly with the possibilities offered by variable fonts—make this a great time to be a publisher and a reader.
Image: BIA Brochure Overview (Source).
