[macvoiceover] Re: Fonts in Accessible Design
- From: Greg Kearney <gkearney@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: General discussions on all topics relating to the use of Mac OS X by the blind <discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2008 09:12:49 -0600
Thank you for your note. I will make note of your comments in the page.
As to which fonts to use for dyslexics I find the comments of British
Dyslexia Association odd and at odds with both my personal experience
as a profound dyslexic and that Landmark School the leading U.S. based
institution for dyslexics as well as my formal training in graphic
design. I do not understand how they can suggest that letter forms
which are distinguished by orientation alone are going to be easier
for a dyslexic, whose disability, at least in part, centers on
difficulty in processing orientation of objects in space, than letter
forms which have other visual cues such as serifs.
Further it is a long held typographic principle that body copy of
books and similar material should be set in serif type to aid
readability. To prove this to your self go to a library or bookstore
and attempt to find a book not set in a seriffed face. As a student
of typography I was taught that sans-serif faces were for signs,
captions and short papers such as websites but for body copy such as
books magazines and newspapers serifs help the normal sighted reader
by making the word's shape stand out relative to the others. One
research paper, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2005.06.013 would
hardly vacate 500 years of typographic practice.
That said one should always avoid setting body in extreme typefaces of
either design as such would be unreadable by the disabled or the
sighted. The recent trend in "grunge typography" is an example of
typeface design that hinders rather than enhances communication in my
opinion. What ever your opinion of "grunge typography" might be I
think we can all agree that it would be a poor choice when dealing
with materials that must be viewed by persons with low vision or
dyslexia.
As to the legal issue surrounding the use of the @font-face they are
well taken and I will make note of them. Interesting, isn't it how
Apple always seems to get out in front of the law on things like this?
Given that my pages deal with issues of design and accessibility I
will continue to use it in this context but you bring up a good point
use of the @font-face exposed the font to download as anyone could
simply read the CSS to extract the full URL to the font itself. I have
added a caution to the page on this.
Greg Kearney
535 S. Jackson St.
Casper, Wyoming 82601
307-224-4022
gkearney@xxxxxxxxx
On Mar 22, 2008, at 4:20 AM, Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis wrote:
Greg Kearney wrote:
Another page on accessible web design this one dealing with the use
of fonts. http://www.cucat.org/projects/navigation/fonts/
Another good article Greg, to which I'd like to add a couple comments.
The article makes some specific claims about the advantages of serif
over non-serif typefaces. As far as I can tell, this is a much more
contentious topic than the article would suggest. The article states
that "Dyslexic users on the other hand need serif type to help them
distinguish letter forms." Is there research that backs up this
claim? Some other published advice disagrees:
http://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/extra352.html
Again the article states that "Readers with no disability also
benefit from serifs as they read whole word shapes and serifs tend
to accentuate that feature of the word." Is this really true? Some
research seems to suggest otherwise:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2005.06.013
The other comment was that, IANAL, but there are legal pitfalls to
@font-face as a potential solution for rendering content in
specialist fonts designed for low-vision users. It's only useful if
you have a licence that allows you to redistribute the font. Many of
the fonts in question have licences that exclude such
redistribution. For example, the licencing for Terminal Design's
fonts, apparently including ClearviewADA, seems to exclude
redistribution:
http://www.terminaldesign.com/licensing/
The same is likely to be true for all fonts that are sold. APHont
seems to be free as in beer, but it's not really clear if we are
allowed to redistribute it. To download it in the first place, you
are required to certify it will be used for low-vision users, which
would seem to militate against free redistribution.
--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
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