Hacker News Reader

Comment by neom | Hacker News Reader

As someone with severe dyslexia I hate this font so much. It's so damn ugly and it HARDLY works (for me it's < 10% better). If someone could design an elegant front weighed so that an internal drop shadow can help the mind render the character more easily and accurately in 3D space, that would be a god send.

View on HN

I don't know why but I find it really hard to read on this site. I'm not dyslexic, but by chance I was reading quite a lot of this font over the weekend, printed, and found it no issue - I barely noticed. Here however I find it much harder to read, and I'm not sure why. I think the spacing is too tight, but apart from that I'm not sure.

I came to say the exact opposite, I find the flow of the text and my comprehension much faster than a regular web page. Not dyslexic btw

I agree, I think it trades off being ever so slightly easier to read with being so damn ugly I don't want to read it. I actually think Comic Sans (as ugly as that is) is easier to read and less ugly than this font.

I totally agree. I would much prefer to struggle through without it. As a side note, I find it hilarious that they chose to do this with a mapping tool. From what I've gathered from other dyslexic folks and in my experience, maps are actually especially easy to deal with.

Out of curiosity, does the Team Fortress 2 font have any effect for you? It looks so similar to the one linked in the article that I thought they were the same.

https://www.dafont.com/tf2-secondary.font?text=The+quick+bro...

A bit, generally speaking any font that creates some novelty in the shape usually helps a bit. On this font the b/d and u/n are still similar.

Based on other comments that it's this font:

https://www.opendyslexic.org/

It looks like they recognize that they are not solving for all forms of dyslexia, but rather a few specific symptoms.

Have you tried BeeLine reader?

http://www.beelinereader.com/individual

Just checked it out, 100% wouldn't be useful for me. One of the issues with my inability to read is that my mind continually gets distracted by everything and anything around the letters, even in the grey scale mode it induced a lot of frustration. Changes in colour/tone are extra distracting, and it's hard to describe the feeling when you're continually checking in the back of your mind if these extra things are needed/matter. Another odd example of this is that every time the white bubble around the date box on the top of slack breaks a new line, my eye gets pulled there and I have to go back to the bottom to find the text again. Absolutely exhausting.

I find that super easy to read, thanks!

Damn this idea is really cool and works for me. I wish I knew this site existed much earlier

Fun fact: BeeLine Reader was launched via a Show HN!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6335784

What do you think about this one? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyslexie

I've read about it several times but since I don't have dyslexia I don't know if it actually works

Doesn't offend my sensibilities, about the same for reading speed and accuracy however (personally I use a lot of text to speech anyways).

The font reminds me of a bulletin from the National Weather Service.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com