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Good Reading : JULY 2016
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GOODREADINGMAGAZINE.COM.AU GOOD READING JULY 2016 16 Last year when we spoke with author Jackie French, she had written 140 books and had a Senior Australian of the Year badge pinned to her jacket. Despite her success as a wordsmith, a childhood experience of reading from years ago still haunted her. She was in primary school, and her teacher asked her to read out a word that was written on the board. Jackie watched helplessly as the letters melted, twisted, flipped and coalesced into an unrecognisable smudge of chalk. She still vividly remembered the shame and confusion. Most of the kids in Jackie’s class could complete the task in a second. For about 90 per cent of the population, the letters of the English alphabet are easily distinguishable. But for someone with dyslexia, ‘b’ can flip into ‘d’, then fall upside down into a ‘q’ or flip again into ‘p’. Some dyslexics see letters as 3D shapes, which also impedes reading. Sentences run into each other like trains without brakes and punctuation marks get lost in the carnage. Dutch graphic designer Christian Boer, who is dyslexic himself, decided to create a font that would help to disentangle letters and allow people with dyslexia to read more easily. To make the font, called Dyslexie, Boer exaggerated the differences between letters. The letter ‘j’ is slanted to further differentiate it from the letter ‘i’. Letters ‘h’, ‘f ’ and ‘p’ are elongated. The letters ‘w’ and ‘v’ – which dyslexics frequently confuse – sit at slightly different heights. Capital letters and punctuation marks are bolded and enlarged so that the beginnings and endings of sentences leap out, and the space between letters is increased to prevent words from merging into each other. At a glance, Dyslexie doesn’t look like a particularly distinctive font. But these subtle adjustments make a world of difference for dyslexic readers. The developers of Dyslexie have teamed up with Sydney-based publisher ReadHowYouWant, which specialises in creating books in alternative for mats that make text more accessible for people with reading difficulties. After printing 4000 Australian books and over 10 000 international titles in large print and braille, they are now aiming to use Dyslexie to make books more accessible to people with dyslexia. ReadHowYouWant general manager Jon Attenborough says that dyslexia is an insidious problem that’s easy to misdiagnose. ‘Dyslexia really can be hidden from the The exact percentage of people with dyslexia is unknown, but it’s estimated at between 5 and 17 per cent of the population. And many people may not even be aware that they have the condition. There’s no cure for it, but now there’s a new way to help people overcome dyslexia – and it’s as simple as using a new font. READERS’ LIFE Defeating Dyslexia
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