I work at a consulting engineering firm and write a lot of reports that are read by the public. I have an opportunity to recommend a different font for all of our written documents and am looking for something more modern/fresh than Times New Roman. Also open to recommendations for purpose specific communities about typography/fonts.

  • Hello_there
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    511 months ago

    Do that one font that’s friendlier to dyslexic people. There’s actually a reason to use that.

    • @DarthGraben@mander.xyzOP
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      611 months ago

      Dyslexie was one of the first fonts I looked at specifically for accessibility purposes. Unfortunately, despite it’s utility, it looks too much like a ‘fun’ font for our documents. Our reports are publicly published for the legal/administrative record, and need to reflect that level of professionalism. :/

      Someone else suggested a font that’s helpful for vision impaired people that I will take forward in this process, so maybe I can get a different accessible font through. Really appreciating the thoughtfulness for people with various reading challenges!

    • Ludwig van Beethoven
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      411 months ago

      Newer research actually says that it mostly doesn’t matter. Use a readable sans or serif, there’s no measurable difference.[1][2][3]

      [1] Wery, J.J., Diliberto, J.A. The effect of a specialized dyslexia font, OpenDyslexic, on reading rate and accuracy. Ann. of Dyslexia 67, 114–127 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11881-016-0127-1
      [2] Kuster, S.M., van Weerdenburg, M., Gompel, M. et al. Dyslexie font does not benefit reading in children with or without dyslexia. Ann. of Dyslexia 68, 25–42 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11881-017-0154-6
      [3] Rello, L., Baeza-Yates, R. How to present more readable text for people with dyslexia. Univ Access Inf Soc 16, 29–49 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-015-0438-8