Since 2018, Dyslexie Font has collaborated with the HOI Foundation to organize the Dutch Week of Dyslexia every first week of October. Our aim is to alter perceptions of neurodiversity and dyslexia by providing information to dyslexic individuals, parents, children, teachers, and businesses.
FRAME YOUR TEXT
TEXT ACCESSIBILITY
You get an assignment and know you have to read it to succeed. Yet as you stare at the page, it feels like an impenetrable wall of text—no white space, no breathing room, just words piled on words. Sadly, that’s the everyday reality for many people with dyslexia—and far too often my own experience as well.
WALL OF TEXT
No matter how good the content of a text is, if the formatting is wrong, the message may not be read at all. Let’s look at why formatting makes such a difference, especially for dyslexics.
Correct formatting ensures peace, better navigation and fewer reading errors.
The way text is positioned on a page or screen has a huge impact on readability.
Always align text to the left.
For continuous reading text it is crucial to align these links. This creates a fixed starting margin for each new line. When you read a sentence and are at the end, you automatically know where the next line is going to start. This prevents you from having to search for the beginning of the next line, which seriously disrupts the reading flow.
A title or a short single or introductory sentence does not necessarily have to be aligned to the left because this is not where the difficulties lie, navigating through text, context words, going between the lines from the end of a sentence to the next sentence, the actual reading.
Never fill out.
Never justify text (justified). When designing fonts, careful consideration is given to the spacing between letters and words. If you justify text, you create irregular, strange gaps between words, or too closely spaced parts. These gaps are distracting and interrupt the reading flow. The ‘crowding effect’ – where letters are too close together – exacerbates reading errors and requires extra concentration. In short: just don’t justify, always align to the left.
Optimal text width / column width.
A common problem is text columns that are too wide. A simple guideline for children (6-8 years old) is 6 to 8 words per line. For adults, this is about 9 to 11 words wide. You don’t have to count this exactly; just pick three lines at random and see if they average out to around this number of words.
With very wide sentences, slow readers feel like they are not making any progress. It seems like it takes forever to get through the text, which quickly reduces the motivation to read on. In addition, with a wide text, you increase the chance of accidentally jumping a line. Switching from the end of one sentence to the beginning of the next also increases the chance of skipping or rereading sentences, which further increases the confusion.
With about 9 to 10 words per line, the text width remains within the direct field of vision, making it easier to navigate through the text and making errors more likely to be noticed. Of course, these principles also apply to people with reduced or impaired vision.
Space to read
Extra space between paragraphs gives the reader peace, but also helps to understand the information better because it is presented in bite-sized chunks.
Space between paragraphs Always use white space between paragraphs. This does not have to be a whole “enter” line of white space; 4 points of extra space after a paragraph can be enough (this can be set automatically in text styles in Adobe InDesign or Word). This extra space gives the reader breathing space. It ensures that a paragraph – a complete set of information – is experienced as a separate block and is remembered better. This also makes it easier to navigate through the text.
Subheadings and hierarchy
Using small subheadings greatly enhances the understanding of the text. They create a clear hierarchy and provide an overview of the reading material. Especially when reading on screens, people tend to scroll and only scan the subheadings before they eventually read the whole text. Dyslexics will often come up with strategies to get the core message without having to read everything; subheadings help enormously with this.
Space around the text
The space around the text is just as important as the text itself.
Margin and column spacing If you have a narrower column, place it in the middle. If you are working with two columns, make sure there is enough white space between them, more than you are used to. Seeing the start of the next column right away while you are reading the end of the current sentence can be distracting and confusing. Space around the outer borders of your document or screen creates calm and prevents distraction.
Screen-specific considerations When designing for screens, you need to take into account additional factors. There is often a 2 to 3 pixel ‘bleed’ towards the screen edge, and many people use cases on their mobile phones that also take up 5 pixels of the edge. So make sure there are ample margins on the sides of screens. On a computer screen, the reading area is naturally oriented towards the center.
If you want to test this, place a text all the way to the right or left of your screen; you will notice that you will even sit differently to be able to read it.
Eye tracking shows what your eyes do that your brain needs to understand what is written.
