New ‘gravity’ font designed to help dyslexic people read

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London, October 9: A font that could make reading online easier for dyslexia sufferers is being made available for free in a bid to boost its use.

It has a heavier bottom to give letters ‘gravity’ – making it less likely the brain will rotate them and confuse sufferers.

The fonts are now available for mobile phones, and its creator Abelardo Gonzalez hopes it will become commonplace online, the Daily Mail reported.

“Your brain can sometimes do funny things to letters,” the paper quoted Gonzalez, a New Hampshire-based mobile app designer, as saying.

“OpenDyslexic tries to help prevent some of these things from happening,” the designer, who released his designs onto the web at the end of last year, stated.

The developers have also created a free browser for iPhones using the font, allowing dyslexia sufferers to easily read web pages on the move.

“Letters have heavy weighted bottoms to add a kind of ‘gravity’ to each letter, helping to keep your brain from rotating them around in ways that can make them look like other letters.

“Consistently weighted bottoms can also help reinforce the line of text. The unique shapes of each letter can help prevent flipping and swapping,” he explained.

Although other, paid for, fonts exist, Gonzalez said he wanted to build a free version.

“I had seen similar fonts, but at the time they were completely unaffordable and so impractical as far as costs go,” he told the BBC.

He says the response to the font has been overwhelming.

“I’ve had people emailing saying this is the first time they could read text without it looking wiggly or has helped other symptoms of dyslexia,” he added. (ANI)