Inter-letter spacing, inter-word spacing, and font with dyslexia-friendly features: testing text readability in people with and without dyslexia

Over the last years, several studies have suggested a possible link between dyslexia and deficits in low-level visual processing (e.g., excessive crowding). At the same time, specially designed “dyslexia-friendly” fonts appeared on the market. This class of fonts presents two main features: the part...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Annals of dyslexia 2020-04, Vol.70 (1), p.141-152
Main Authors: Galliussi, Jessica, Perondi, Luciano, Chia, Giuseppe, Gerbino, Walter, Bernardis, Paolo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alphabets
Child
Children
Comprehension - physiology
Crowding
Design
Dyslexia
Dyslexia - psychology
Dyslexia - therapy
Education
Female
Humans
Language and Literature
Layout (Publications)
Linguistics
Male
Neurology
Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology
Photic Stimulation - methods
Proximity
Psycholinguistics
Readability
Reading
Reading accuracy
Reading Improvement
Reading Rate
Social Sciences
Typefaces
Visual Literacy
Visual Perception - physiology
Visual processing
Word Processing
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Summary:Over the last years, several studies have suggested a possible link between dyslexia and deficits in low-level visual processing (e.g., excessive crowding). At the same time, specially designed “dyslexia-friendly” fonts appeared on the market. This class of fonts presents two main features: the particular graphic characteristics of the letterform designed to avoid confusion between similarly shaped letters, and wider inter-letter and inter-word spacing to limit crowding. The literature testing the efficacy of “dyslexia-friendly” fonts in improving reading accuracy and increasing reading speed is controversial. We evaluated the impact of letterform (with vs. without dyslexia-friendly graphic features), inter-letter spacing (standard vs. increased), and inter-word spacing (standard vs. increased) on reading accuracy and speed. Two groups of 64 children each, with and without dyslexia, read aloud 8 equivalent texts. The data collected failed to show any effect from the letterform. As regards spacing, the data showed that reading speed is impaired by an increase in inter-letter spacing not combined with an adequate increase in inter-word spacing.
ISSN:0736-9387
1934-7243
DOI:10.1007/s11881-020-00194-x