Inclusive Sans: Text font designed for accessibility and readability

[Etheryte]

Any font that's designed for accessibility should always run an actual study to measure whether they managed to hit their mark or not. There's countless fonts out there designed to ameliorate dyslexia and other similar conditions that are in practice actually worse than a regular font, despite best intentions. This is something you can measure, you don't have to guess.

[mikae1]

> Any font that's designed for accessibility should always run an actual study to measure whether they actually hit their mark or not.

https://www.lexend.com/

[jcotton42]

It is not a good sign that the first thing on that site is an eye-searing white-on-red banner.

[tzmlab]

Another great accessible font – Atkinson Hyperlegible [0]

[0] - https://brailleinstitute.org/freefont

[rob74]

Actually I like that one better! For instance, Inclusive Sans boasts about its "clear distinction between I [uppercase i], l [lowercase L] and 1", but the lowercase L is just a vertical bar, so might as well be mistaken for an I if there is no I to compare it to. In Atkinson Hyperlegible, the lowercase L has a slight "tail" which helps distinguish it - and the serifs on the uppercase i feel a bit less jarring.

[mikae1]

And Lexend[1][2].

[1] https://www.lexend.com

[2] https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Lexend

[geraldwhen]

Easily a superior font.

[0cf8612b2e1e]

Anything in monospace?

[nolongerthere]

Did anyone else find the green background and the white text clash in a way that made it difficult to read? I found that ironic given the article.

[eadmund]

> Did anyone else find the green background and the white text clash in a way that made it difficult to read?

No, but only because with Javascript disabled there is literally nothing but an olive green page. Truly remarkable, given that it is supposed to be inclusive.

[kps]

Not because of the hue, but because the page doesn't respect `prefers-color-scheme`, which makes it hard to take any claim of ‘accessibility’ seriously.

Edit: nor `prefers-reduced-motion`, neither.

[geraldwhen]

The fade in effect made me nauseous. I hate animation on webpages unless I’m seeking out gifs.

[andy99]

Yeah I still can't tell if I'm just overanalyzing because it's supposed to be easy to read, but I found the webpage, especially the italicized bit, pretty jarring, even in contrast with my usual squinting at HN's tiny font on my phone.

[nottorp]

Same here. I can't evaluate the font because of the background.

Don't see why I should wait for images to fade in either.

[madeofpalk]

This font looks radically different on my two monitors, being significantly worse on my 'standard' DPI monitor compared to my other high DPI monitor.

On my main, 1x monitor, the lowercase i has an anti-aliased "half pixel" at the bottom that extends past the baseline. A few other characters have this, but it's especially noticable on the lowcase i.

[csande17]

The font could definitely use some technical tweaking for issues like that -- the kerning on "qu" also stands out as a problem.

It looks like this is the author's first attempt at making a font, though, and by that standard it's pretty good!

[microflash]

It does look pleasant to me. But the x-height is not large enough which makes it harder to be legible on smaller text sizes. Also, lack of additional weights discourages me to use it on any webpage. I'd have given it a shot if a bold weight were also present.

Inter (with disambiguation features enabled) [1], Atkinson Hyperlegible [2], and IBM Plex Sans [3] are still better fonts to me.

[1]: https://rsms.me/inter/

[2]: https://brailleinstitute.org/freefont

[3]: https://www.ibm.com/plex/

[ClassyJacket]

>Clear distinction between I, l and 1

The problem with that is that in this font, the l (lower case L) is just a vertical line. It's true there is a distinction between the 3, but seeing the l on its own you can't tell which it is.

[cybervegan]

Any reason why "Pp" is missing from the typeface sampler?

[RobotToaster]

Another good font for this is OpenDyslexic https://opendyslexic.org/

[extra88]

Not really. In studies, OpenDyslexic and other "dyslexia fonts" with exaggerated shapes didn't perform better than commonly used conventional fonts.

[wizzwizz4]

Obligatory: the most accessible font is usually a font your readers are already familiar with. This font looks distinctive, and personally I kinda like it, but it's not a magic wand you can wave over a document to make it more accessible.

[jraph]

Yeah, on the web, just use font-family: sans-serif (or, now that browsers don't systematically default to a serif font anymore, just nothing at all) and let the user see the default font, or the font they picked. It also improves everything else in contrast with a web font: it saves bandwidth and therefore cost, it saves page load time and therefore SEO and user retention. And it's not worse, nay better, than the font you arbitrarily picked.

The default font needs to be dyslexic friendly on a dyslexic's computer if it's not already, and it should be the OS's job to ensure this.

I am afraid there's no one size fits all wrt fonts and accessibility because I suspect different conditions have different requirements, so you can't pick yourself as a web designer.

We indeed need dyslexic friendly fonts among others so dyslexic people can configure their devices with one that they like, fonts that are indeed actually proven as being effective as another commenter said. No proof: it didn't happen.

[hot_gril]

Was going to ask, wouldn't something like Times New Roman be the most accessible just cause people are used to it? Plus, serifs make the letters more recognizable.

[seydor]

Is there evidence that this is more legible? Because we don't read individual characters (but chunks) so making them individually distinguishable doesn't seem like it would have much of an effect.

[markhnthoraway]

In the part where the claim is made that individual characters matter there's a footnote link that ultimately goes to this PDF thesis[1].

That thesis has a claim itself:

> Creating a well designed, legible typeface is therefore not about creating dissimilar characters; the aim must be to find, amongst other things, an optimal balance between uniformity and differentiation and, through that, to attain legibility

At the end of the related chapter, where the author surveys some studies about letter and word recognition. It seems like the distinctions made in this font may be informed by that kind of perspective - not that increased differentiation of characters is good on its own.

This is just at a glance but it seems there is at least a thread there to follow about evidence and reasoning.

[1] https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/40037679.pdf

[Terr_]

It's probably the nostalgia talking, but I miss OCR-A.

[tomtomistaken]

Oh wow, the text is so much easier for me to read! Thanks for sharing!

[MaximilianEmel]

The `i' looks like an Inverted Exclamation Mark.

[jjjjoe]

Where is the letter P in the second image?

[Fauntleroy]

This typeface bears more than a passing resemblance to Circular, whose owner is known for litigating unauthorized usage. I'm concerned this will become a problem for Inclusive Sans or its users.

[wizzwizz4]

Typefaces are not protected by intellectual property law. Fonts, as computer software, are, but it should be easy to show that Inclusive Sans is a completely different program. I wouldn't worry about it, personally.