In 1927, Samuel Orton, a neuropsychiatrist, observed that many of his young patients with reading difficulties reversed similar letters, confusing d for b, for example. Concluding that the condition was caused by “directional confusion,” he coined the term strephosymbolia, meaning “twisted symbol.” The characterization, but not the coinage, stuck—and fueled early speculation that what came to be known as dyslexia was a visual disorder that caused printed letters to appear as a confusing, jumbled mess.
Since then, a cottage industry of dyslexia-focused products has emerged, hawking everything from prisms to tinted glasses and transparent color overlays. One website catering to dyslexic readers—whose tagline promises to solve “complicated problems with a simple solution”—sells prism glasses, offering up a slew of testimonials touting the product’s benefits. “My reading has improved from 4th grade to college level,” exclaims one satisfied wearer.
In the last decade, another contender—typographic fonts designed to alleviate the reading difficulties associated with dyslexia—has entered the popular discourse. The simple, classroom-friendly intervention claims to improve the speed and accuracy of dyslexic readers by adjusting the size and shape of fonts, adding thicker lines to help students distinguish between similar letters. The designers of the fonts claim that the “heaviness” of the letters, for example, prevents them from flipping upside-down or left-to-right, while the arms—the top of a b or d, for example—have varying thicknesses to reduce possible confusion.
According to the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity, dyslexia is the most common learning disability, affecting one in five children. Students with dyslexia often struggle to read, prompting teachers to search far and wide for helpful remedies. The market for solutions is large and alluring.
But the new fonts—and the odd assortment of paraphernalia that came before them—assume that dyslexia is a visual problem rooted in imprecise letter recognition. That’s a myth, explains Joanne Pierson, a speech-language pathologist at the University of Michigan. “Contrary to popular belief, the core problem in dyslexia is not reversing letters (although it can be an indicator),” she writes. The difficulty lies in identifying the discrete units of sound that make up words and “matching those individual sounds to the letters and combinations of letters in order to read and spell.”
In other words, dyslexia is a language-based processing difference, not a vision problem, despite the popular and enduring misconceptions. “Even when carefully explained, soundly discredited, or decisively dispatched, these and similar dyslexia myths and their vision-based suppositions seem to rise from the dead—like the villain-who-just-won’t-die trope in a B movie,” the International Dyslexia Association forcefully asserts.
Dyslexia Fonts, Under the Microscope
Under close scrutiny, the evidence for dyslexia-friendly fonts falls apart. In a 2017 study, for example, researchers tested whether OpenDyslexic, a popular font with thicker lines near the bottom of the letters, could improve the reading rate and accuracy for young children with dyslexia. According to the developers of the font, which is open-source and free of charge, the “heaviness” of the letters prevented them from turning upside down for readers with dyslexia, which they claimed would improve reading accuracy and speed.
close modal Shelley Adams OpenDyslexic features heavier lines that are meant to increase readability for readers with dyslexia—but rigorous research suggests that other mainstream fonts may be more effective.
Researchers put the font to the test, comparing it with two other popular fonts designed for legibility—Arial and Times New Roman—and discovered that the purportedly dyslexia-friendly font actually reduced reading speed and accuracy. In addition, none of the students preferred to read material in OpenDyslexic, a surprising rebuke for a font specifically designed for the task.
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