Atkinson Hyperlegible Font

Related. Others?

Atkinson Hyperlegible Font - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32799872 - Sept 2022 (234 comments)

Atkinson Hyperlegible – a font by the Braille Institute designed for legibility - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28010540 - July 2021 (1 comment)

Atkinson Hyperlegible Font - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26011945 - Feb 2021 (86 comments)

Atkinson Hyperlegible Font - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25154417 - Nov 2020 (10 comments)

Atkinson Hyperlegible Font - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24853550 - Oct 2020 (3 comments)

Atkinson Hyperlegible appears to slash their zeroes in the same direction as backslash, unlike all other fonts I have used where the slash in slashed zeroes have the same direction as a forward slash. Not sure if this was a deliberate design choice.

https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Atkinson+Hyperlegible?prev...

https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Inconsolata?preview.text=0...

I'm personally not sure if I like the font in bodies of text, but I adore it for presentations.

You don't have long texts on slides, and everything is very distinct. I find it especially helpful, as many setups where one presents can be suboptimal (e.g., bad lighting, obstructed views, warped surface that is projected on, …). Which is where this font shines not only for people with impaired vision, but for everyone.

I am astigmatic. I tried taking off my glasses and reading this page side-by-side against a Substack article zoomed in at the same font size at a distance. I could not make any difference in ease of reading or legibility, I struggled roughly equally for both of them. What am I missing?

I understand if this is supposed to be better for dyslexics, but the fact that the distinctions of the letters are so heavily emphasized makes it harder to read, since I generally read entire words at a time, not letters, and the individual letters are less important than how they look together in a word or a sentence.

I found it amusing that the end user license agreement is available only as a PDF on Box. That's not exactly the most accessible format but I got it downloaded. It appears to be a relatively straightforward license, prohibiting commercial resale of the font and its derivatives, but allowing it to be bundled with commercially sold software.

https://braileinstitute.app.box.com/s/rin3vzegmcy7sil28yfqsl...

Is there a monospaced version, or an inspired monospaced version based on this available?

My go-to is Verdana based on previous empirical tests. It's bigger at the same pt size compared to other fonts, but if you size it down about 1/12th it is just as legible but at a higher characters per inch, which is good for trying to squeeze text into an interface, especially when that interface may be viewed by a group on a projector or screen share.

I just tried to half-ass a similar test by editing the Google Font explorer UI to put them next to each other. Atkinson beats out Verdana for width, by about 4% (eyeballed and envelope math), however it's also 1 pixel taller per line at that size. So it's a more rectangular font. I'd have to think about how I'd want to use it, if I care more about lines per page or characters per column.

Also consider "Atkinson Hyperlegible Pro" an updated and slightly extendend Version: https://github.com/tryoxiss/atkinson-hyperlegible-pro

> Please enter your email address to begin downloading.

One of the testimonials implies that they've forced all websites to use this font, and it improved their experience significantly.

I suspect that would be true of Arial, even! This has been my goal for some time, but no browser has such an option. (You can change the default font, but almost no website leaves it set to default, so it does nothing.)

While the characters are certainly distinctive, I find paragraphs to actually be less legible than, say, Times New Roman.

https://www.lexend.com is an alternative.

Visually impaired guy here, always excited to see things that make my life easier. Also great that it shows blindness is a spectrum, not a binary condition.

The "clear uprights" feature is something I've been shouting about for a long time. It's inexcusable that commonly-used fonts like Verdana (right here on HN) can't distinguish between l and I.

I find it easier to distinguish "O" and "0" in fonts that distinguish between capital letter "O" and number zero "0" by putting a dot or something inside. It is already annoying, when you need to guess based on width or other shape between the 2, because that assumes, that you are seeing both at the same time, looking back and forth between them.

Additionally "I" and "l" look way too similar.

So I think "Unambiguous Letterforms" in this case not necessarily true.

It's a good one to add as a custom font on Kindle/ebook devices

I did find it easy to read. But the font size on this website is also larger than average (at least on my mobile phone), so that is a variable that would have to be controlled first.

I appreciate that an expert institution designed a font for low vision readers with actual research. Every time I run an app that has OpenDyslexic as a font choice I die a little inside. It's the worst sort of "pretend to be helping" option. It actually is worse for reading than ordinary fonts. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5629233/

The most legible font I have ever seen – and I wish someone would make an open-source version of it, and a monospace version, along with more glyphs – is Heinemann Special. No two characters look the same, and the font is really pleasant to read. No [back]slashed-zero, though.

That font is not the only designed for legibility. Luciole is another one :

https://luciole-vision.com/luciole-en.html

Hack font is pretty good and doesn't collect your email https://github.com/source-foundry/Hack

I have an issue with the lowercase q which looks a lot like a lowercase a. In many other fonts, these two letters look quite different and it's unlikely that you would mix them up.

The font itself is not enough for good readability.

So-called "UI/UX" designer are making a lot of fancy work to make things illegible. Contrast between background (aka "paper") and foreground (aka "ink") is going down and down. So, no matter the font of choice, text is becoming less readable (and less relevant) also because of color choices. While video and audio contents is getting more and more attention.

Not bad. Can’t see if they have a fixed width version though.

Great seeing that they also have a great website score for Web Accessibility https://wave.webaim.org/report#/https://www.brailleinstitute... which shows a near perfect Web Accessibility Score.

Gives credence that they do take it seriously.

Is the tight kerning before the lowercase letter "l" intentional? I find it hard to believe that's the optimum choice for readability. Words like "title" seem like they're harder to read than average because there's almost no space between the t and the l.

See also the font designed for readability* in Airbus cockpits

https://b612-font.com/

I like this idea, but for most companies, they've already decided on their fonts and many corporations already have strict guidelines on what fonts to use and many are either variants of popular fonts, or changed in some way that aligns with their branding.

I still think its a good step forward.

Sure, it's readable, but the font size is also set to be twice as big as what I set my font size as (2rem) so I would expect that. Assuming everyone sets their font to what is acceptable for them, what is the reason for setting this page to 2x that size?

Pretty awesome font, I've found it pairs really well with other readable fonts like Lexend too.

I just like that it's normally legible, in that it distinguishes AI from Al and such, which normal sans-serif fonts rarely do. It does this by having serifs, yes, which seems like a lost art among the Usability Experts of the world.

I would like to see HN use this.

Is there any peer-reviewed studies about this or are those claims unsubstantiated?

That’s one ugly Å, without any separation. The font looks nice in general though.

That q is too similar to single story ą for my taste (even if this font uses double story a/ą). But otherwise it's the most aesthetically pleasing of the legibility-oriented fonts :)

Ironically I find "legibility" to be a real train wreck of a word to read. Not just in this font (although I do find the shorter ascenders difficult) but as a word, generally.

This is the sort of thing I'd love to see Tentacruel look at. His videoes briefly covered iconography and fonts and I'd bet he'd have some cool insights about this font.

Weirdly, I got eye strain from that page. I think it's not the font itself to blame, but the combination of its default size in my browser with being #000000 on #FFFFFF - too much contrast.

Nice, but kerning seems off. See for example word "Tails" in the article. a and i should be closer.

open letter to all font people: You have a skill, design, which is a skill I don't have, so I am glad you are working on fonts and not me. A beautiful font is a thing to behold, it decreases stress and leaves us muy tranquilo-OOOOMMMM

however: when I am in a spreadsheet, trying to choose a typeface & font for one column, my goal is NEVER to suddenly expand either the width, or the height, or the amount of hover over the baseline, or fabulous quantities of descender or ascender, or linespacing or i-don't-know,-you-tell-me-the-terminology, I don't want your typeface to shockingly change its alignment to all the other text I have

and that includes "oh, just select a different pointsize"; if things are the same pointsize, then they should be able to sit next to one another; I know it's not your fault, but you know whose fault it really really isn't? MINE

I really want to use your typefaces; don't make it so hard

This is a sans serif font. I thought that impairs readability in blocks of text.

Is there a Nerdfont version of this that I can use for my terminal?

i just want to say the terms and condition were 2 pages of pretty simple language and this was probably the first time I encounter term in such a consumable form. cheers.

I have a feeling I'm looking at Comic Sans... and the idea that Comic Sans might actually be a really legible font dawns on me. I don't know what to believe anymore.

What a name! - A dot Atkinson