Download here: brailleinstitute.org/freefont or from Google Fonts. Really honored to have had the opportunity to contribute to this project. You can find more links in the video description if you want to find out more.
@@jemesmemes9026 Most programming fonts already make a big effort to distinguish characters like 0O and Ili1! and I don't know that this would be a revolutionary addition but more choice is always good.
@@nsanooj This! As a programmer, having an easy to read mono font for your code is super useful. Plus I'm sure there are plenty of programmers who have vision impairments but want the vertical legibility of monospaced fonts.
@@masonbarber871 JetBrains Mono, IBM Plex Mono, B612 Mono, Red Hat Mono, and Source Code Pro are your best candidates currently. Cousine, which is metrically compatible with Courier New, might also work for you.
As a programmer, if there was a monospaced version of this font I would switch my code editors to it in a heartbeat. For just about everyone who programs, mono is king, avoiding homoglyphs is vital, and ease of reading is excellent. Atkinson Hyperlegible solves two out of these three masterfully, we just need a monospaced version.
Fira Code is by far my favourite, it has ligatures that make certain characters join such as => becoming a 2 lined arrow. If you don't want this you can get Fira Mono. The font is far more legible than others I've tried and can look at it all day
I remember once reading an article in a magazine about a new type for road signs - Clearview. They stated that despite ALL CAPS is large, it's not as well readable as properly designed Capitalised Lower Case, because people read words as units, not as individual letters. No wonder, Clearview also had that lower case l tail. Too bad it hasn't been considered for my country...
This is a really great breakdown of why the balance between aesthetics and character differentiation in legibility. My clients are often very into the idea of accessibility, and I've been asked a few times if "dyslexic" fonts should be used in a more mainstream way, and struggle to explain the intricacies of why these kinds of super-differentiated, often very wonky, typefaces are not always the most accessible. I'll just send this video from now on instead of trying to explain it myself!
Many love to defend the useage of Comic Sans for this reason too, saying it is an accessible font and should be used everywhere. But I heavily disagree, beyond for personal use, of course. Personally, having ADHD I feel Comic Sans is harder to read because I focus on its ugliness and caricatureish wonkiness instead for focusing on the text itself. I usually say that to defend myself and other people like me with same problems. I wonder if this Atkinson Hyperlegible is a good font for dyslexic, I hope so, because it is a font I can heartily accept. It is wonky but in a well adjusted way.
It's neat seeing some of the things I've added to my own handwriting to improve legibility in math work (flagged 1, serif l, and backslash 0) be used in a real font. The only thing it's missing is crossed 7s.
Andrii Babarytskyi That runs the risk of being too similar to “3” though. I recall reading once even that some cyrillic typewriters used to just have one key for both 3 and Ze, since they were so similar that it was easier to not have to make an extra key for 3.
As someone who has dabbled in subtitles, specifically fansubs, prioritizing legibility of on-screen text has been a #1 goal of mine. So to have a good looking font such as this that has legibility as its main focus is honestly a god-send. Thanks for letting everyone know about this font, as I’m pretty much going to be using it from now on for any subtitles that I work on!
As someone with dyslexia, i am very happy to see you cover accessibility in font design! Thank you to you and the rest of the team for creating this very helpful font
So is my instinct correct that the specific effort put in to differentiate similar letterforms also makes this a good dyslexia font, without the problems inherent to Comic Sans?
@@Altoclarinets Yes. One of the aspects of dyslexia is that we often mix up letters that have similar forms (a 'q' can look like a 'p', even though they are mirror images of each other) or that look confusing when clumped together (an 'n' and an 'm' look similar when in the middle of a word, such as in 'minimum'). The more distinguishable the letters are, the easier it is to read for most dyslexic people.
I would definitely consider it an improvement over Dyslexie and OpenDyslexic. I'm just starting to learn typography but I can say just visually I like Hyperlegible a lot more.
BIA should reach out to Apple, Microsoft and Google to have the Atkinson Hyperlegible included by default in their future releases of Windows, Mac OS, iOS and Android.
@@mesteme I think the main idea behind Google purchasing the font is so that you have to use their services if you want to design something with Hyperlegible. Big tech doesn't give two shuts about any of us if it doesn't benefit their bottom line.
Před 3 lety+37
@@kirayamato080300 google didn't buy it, just distributing it. The font is free.
@@kirayamato080300 you clown, Google fonts allows you to download the font so you can use it on your pc, and also hosts the font so you can embed it in a website.
Getting Atkinson Hyperlegible included as a system font would go a long way toward encouraging its adoption. For example, when collaborating on a Microsoft Word document, if I send it to someone who doesn’t have the same font, it won’t display correctly - this can sometimes result in drastic formatting changes. This hassle alone makes us all want to stick with system fonts even though there are better professional fonts. (While you can embed fonts in Word files _if_ permitted by the license agreement, it’s not perfect, and it greatly increases file size.)
This makes my disabled yet design nerd self extremely happy! Congratulations on working on a project that I know will positively impact the lives of many.
I'm a designer from Brazil, and my wife has low vision. We LOVED your video, and really liked the new type. We've been using APHONT up and down, but we will try Atkinson Hyperlegible, and if it suit us, we're changing for sure. Thanks, and keep up the good work. :)
One thing I noticed, when typing my own name- When I type "r" and "i" next to each other, the thing sticking out of the "i" is at the same level of the thing sticking out of the "r". Combined with how the thing sticking out of the "r" does not curl down like in most typical fonts, and how the "i" does not have that bottom flat line, the sequence "ri" in this font looks a lot more like an "n" than in the average font.
Huh, these changes remind me a lot of what's done with monospace fonts meant for programming. Slashed/dotted zeroes, differentiating I/l/1, etc. It's another situation where you really don't want to have potentially confusing near-homoglyphs.
In fact, I've designed bitmap monospace fonts and a lot of these things show up in my designs (the main differences are that the same pseudoserif that appears on "i", on my fonts also often appear on "j" and "l".
I think that's a great idea! I remember in school all of my teachers would either use Arial, Times New Roman, or on a particularly bad day Comic Sans. I think Atkinson Hyperlegible is aesthetically way more appealing than any of those and of course more accessible.
This is incredible. As a graphic designer who works in disability justice this is often an issue I run into. I'd love to see your take on typefaces for neurodivergencies like dyslexia and ADHD. While existing fonts like OpenDyslexic and Dyslexie have given it a shot, the feedback I've received from dyslexic people has been mixed at best. Some time back I shared a meme in a disabled student group chat I started and it was met with excitement and enthusiasm! The meme involved a way of typing that made the first letter of key words bolder and jump out more, therefore leading the eye along without resistance and assisting many ADHD people read without becoming distracted. It's definitely an interesting and necessary design challenge
As I have grown older I have gone from perfect vision, to needing reading glasses all the time. Things that drive me mad :- * Cooking instructions on ready meals - Small fonts, no contrast in a sea of text. *Sell by /use by dates on food in the supermarket - hard to locate, small and badly printed. * menus in restaurants - fancy fonts, poor contrast, tiny size, poor lighting. I am really enjoying your videos. Thanks Linus.
I find use-by dates tend to look like they were printed by a dot-matrix printer of some sort. Which might very well be the case, especially on curved surfaces like jars. I can imagine pins hitting a ribbon that can flex to the curve of the glass might very well be the best way to get the job done.
@@Roxor128 oftentimes on bottles at least, they’re actually spray printed on with a jet of air as they go down the conveyor belt. Sometimes they warp if something disrupts the belt
This is awesome even for people with no serious visual impairment such as me, as there always are situations where the visibility of the text itself gets hindered in one way or another.
The way I think about it is we all benefit if those who have always been disadvantaged aren't left behind. There is no detriment to universal design, improving accessibility, legibility, etc, for anyone - similar to what Linus said, it isn't a zero sum game
@@RamtheCowy I use glasses I can see my phone up close but arms length away I barely read. With these fonts I can read it easier even without my glasses from arms length, still hard but hey it helps (:
This font is stunning. Even ignoring its functional purpose, it's still a very elegant and understandable typeface. Applause for the Braille Institute for putting this font together.
As a literacy specialist and trainer with an Indigenous Corporation - iATSIC - training rangers here in Queensland, we have decided to use Hyperlegible in all our resources. Thank you to all involved in creating it.
I'm a teacher and I've been using this font in all the material I make for my students and some of them have asked me about the font, because it's easier on their eyes as they say, so you and the entire team should be really proud of what you've accomplished 👏
My first name starts with an I (uppercase i, not a lowercase L), and sans-serif fonts make my life so much more difficult than it needs to be. I've resorted to putting my address in code blocks anytime I can, because monospace fonts are generally speaking serif fonts, but otherwise there's a 99% chance someone will assume I misspelled my own name with a lowercase initial.
I feel for you! I've always found this very irritating, and I don't really understand why it's not considered more of an issue than your usual Comic Sans misuse meme. I cannot recall how many times I needed to copy and paste into Notepad to find out what a string of characters really was when you don't have cultural hints to distinguish between lowercase L and uppercase I. For example just Google "Ievan Polkka" (correct) vs "Levan Polkka" (incorrect), you'll be amazed!
@@matt4054yt Fwiw, my name is almost 1:1 the same as your example (except they rounded off the bottom of the V), and to any Welsh person (origin of my name) it would be obvious that the first letter is an I and not an L. I take more offense to people not just copy-pasting what I send them than I do to them mixing up the order of the vowels or just altogether butchering my name, because this mistake is almost always digital as I use a serif I with a thick line top and bottom or a cursive I when writing. This really is a much bigger issue than the Comic Sans MS thing, I very much agree. All fonts should distinguish between letters, but I'm not sure what sans-serif solution there would be for the I and L?
@@daylen577 I like the way Atkinson Hyperlegible solved it (at 5:14 in the video). It obviously breaks the sans serif aesthetics, but a major point of this video is the function vs design balance and tradeoffs.
Matthieu Houriet I’d like if more sans-serif fonts would add slight serifs just on capital “i”; I feel like that could really help for distinguishing them without breaking the aesthetic too much-thinking of how, in my experience at least, people’s (non-cursive) handwriting tends to not replicate serifs on most letters but often will on capital “i” (and sometimes J or 1 too).
As someone who used to design fonts, excellent breakdown of the key components that make this typeface succeed in its vision. I’ll have to take a look at it myself and study it
You told me to, so here I am. As someone with severe astigmatic myopia (with a -12 spherical index in one eye), even with corrective lenses, I do deeply appreciate humanist touches in typefaces. I'd also like to thank you for the role you played, invisible as it may seem sometimes; as not enough people can appreciate kerning without being told directly about it.
This is so genuinely cool, good job, and I'm so glad that it's freely available. Money and availability can often stand in the way of accessibility, so I'm very glad this final additional barrier is removed here.
I'm a product designer who heads up the inclusive design practice at my start-up. I can't wait to share this video and typeface with my team. Awesome work!
Hey Linus, I dont know if you read comments on old videos, but I feel like I need to tell you about the impact this video had on me. I am quite fond of accessible design due to a multitude of reasons. I was watching your videos before this one came out and still remember installing and using it for documents of my local club. I since have written my bachelor thesis on the subject of accessibility, especially for government communication. The topic was to a large part inspired by this video and it enabled me to take an educated look at the document as a whole. Not only the building and facilities need to be accessible, but also the content and design of our communication, including the font. I have since received my degree and will start working at the councils office where I have written my thesis. I am still hopeful that I can integrate accessible design in our workflow. Maybe we'll have a process that is way more accessible soon. I love you and your videos, they have tought me a lot and they reinvigoured my interest in typography and logo design. As some other commentator put it: You really are criminally underrated!
Returning to this video after using this font as my browser default since it released and I can confidently say it's improved my life. Every readable typeface I tried before was either ugly, completely ruined formatting, or both. Finally, I feel I can actually browse the web without getting a migraine every thirty minutes, so thank you so much!
I love this! I am doing signage for a new building and I am going to try and use this font as the base for directional signage so that it's easier for people with poor vision to navigate.
As a dyslexic person this is super interesting, I would love a learning disability accessible font that is not ugly comic Sans, typeface makes big difference in how long I can read something before becoming to tried.
This channel is so criminally undersubbed for how incredible the content is. I hope the algorithm gods are kinder to you, because this is one of the top 10 channels on this site IMO 👏
I love your channel. I have zero connection to design but I just like learning about new things and I absolutely love the aesthetics of your videos. The animations, the video editing, the graphic design. Everything absolute on point. Presented in a super pleasent way. Keep up the fantastic work!
24 years ago, I visited a Frutiger exhibition, which was a mixture of his graphics and typography works. And I purchased a little booklet about the history and creation of his font Frutiger. One of the figures that fascinated me the most was his way of testing legibility on paper. Back in the day, there was no easy way to apply a blur filter, like we can do so quickly today. So instead he used hatching to achieve a similar effect. Very "graphic designer". This image is so burnt into my mind and always comes up whenever accessibility pops up as a subject. Adrian is simply one of my design heroes and I was so happy to see him and his work mentioned here again. And maybe I am too old but I don't associate OCR fonts with sci-fi. To me they are synonymous with machine readable checks :) which now feels so far far back in time.
This is brilliant! As a diabetic with thankfully good eyesight so far, I’m aware of the impact ease of reading will have in my future and does to others anyway. I’ll be substituting this in for Helvetica wherever I can!
Selectively adding serifs back in to a sans-serif font to remove homoglyphs is very smart, and the way it's been done in this font whilst not sacrificing aesthetics is genius!
as someone who doesnt have as bad of eyesight as the target audience of this font, blurring the words is a good way for me to sympathise with their struggles and it illustrates the point cleanly
I ended up switching to Hyperlegible for my WoW UI and I can tell you that it easily improved my ability to read quickly and understand my guildies correctly in guild chat. I had particular issues with a vs e vs c, o vs 0, and so on. Bless this font for existing.
Something I noticed about this font is the considerations made to make it easier to read work not just for people with poor sight. The font is definitely easier to read especially at small sizes
What a fantastic video! I graduated graphic design and had always dreamed to work in type design, though somehow ended up falling in love with medicine and ended up in med school after some trials with my own health. Regardless, type design still holds a very special place in my heart - something nearly impossible to explain to fellow med students, especially in Brazil where typography is often undervalued even by graphic designers. This feels like a marriage of lots of themes that have been very important to me: disability, accessibility, typography… Lovely! Edit: on a side-note, one of my closest friends in design school had dyslexia and always reminded us how differentiation between different letters helped her. I remember her finding Futura a nightmare hahah
Unrelated sidenote, when I first saw one of your videos I genuinely thought it was from a channel with over 1 million subscribers just because of the sheer quality of your videos. They always look and sound professional. I was surprised when I saw I was wrong. Keep up the good word, cause I know there's many more like me who love these types of videos who will find this channel!
Even for making tags and signs for stuff in a workplace, especially in like a factory for example where communication is vital, replacing Arial with this font is an incredible idea. Even if it's just for the fact it handles homoglyphs and looks neutral like Helvetica. Too I know in my factory we have a lot of older folks with vision difficulties, so they would definitely appreciate it.
Strangely enough, I'm redoing my handwriting font and this is actually incredibly valuable to that. I'm always looking for ways to improve accessibility for my art. This is immensely helpful in my pursuits.
I just got myself a gig doing some editorial work with people with difficulty reading in mind so this comes as a godsend. Will definetly be trying it out!
This has been my favorite font for a while now. I am nearsighted with astigmatism and my vision is very blurry on dark theme sites/apps etc. I can't read high contrast dark theme at all. Sometimes I will write a userstyle to change the colors but sometimes this is not really feasible due to how the page's code is structured. So my solution to legibility for my own use is one userstyle that just blanket changes everything into Atkinson Hyperlegible. It's not perfect because my vision issues are often due to color and size, but it genuinely does help me a great deal in everyday life. I can't live without it.
I know the online RPG site Roll20 just added a lot of user-selectable fonts, many based on accessibility. I'll suggest adding this. Thanks for highlighting many of the features.
This has been super, super helpful for me! I'm based in Melbourne, and working on opening a not-for-profit, social enterprise cafe (should be due for opening in about a month, covid permitting) set within a new community centre. As part of our social vision we're trying to model being a welcoming environment. Thinking about how this is expressed through our typography and design choices has been really helpful. One of our projects is partnering with local council to mode being a dementia friendly cafe: making our menus, forms, and other paperwork, easier to read with good type is really great! Thanks!
I think this font has that super neat handwriting look to it, it's seriously making me consider switching from my main font of helvetica. You know the type of handwriting I'm talking about, the type you see in all those handwriting videos or the kind that the one girl in class busts out and proclaims "my handwriting is so bad"
Amazing breakthrough! I've now adopted this typeface for all my training work and email. And I've become keen to promote its use to others - thank you!
i watched this video with my glasses off since my natural vision is in the legal blindness range, and i've gotta say that i really can read atkinson hyperlegible better than other fonts even when i can barely see 👀 i think i'll go and donate to the creators, they deserve it :)
I'm having troubles to see small fonts lately, and I'm a fan of dark mode in everything, so any kind of help is appreciated. I was very happy to see that isn't only Google docs online options and I downloaded it succesfully in my computer. Thanks a lot for this.
Rewatching cause since seeing it after it first came out, Atkinson Hyperlegible has been my default font, and I’m not even visually impaired! But it’s been such a gift in school to be able to reduce the font size of my notes while still keeping everything readable 😊
As someone who has lived their entire life being legally blind, I'd like to thank you for trying to make things a little easier. It almost seems like legibility is an afterthought in so many products..from packaging to web design and text in video games. Something as simple as telling whether the instructions on a baking mix box say "3/4 or 1/4" cup can turn into a horrendous chore f or someone with visual impairment. Thank you again for being a part of this project. You have helped produce something that will make countless lives a little easier.
I thought I would come back to this video and say I've been using the font since this video first came out. It's great! Really love it, especially the capital O/zero difference and capital i lower L difference. Both very useful for my science degree right now. Thank you!!
This is fantastic and completely fascinating! I can definitely see how this font would be super beneficial to some DeafBlind people I know. Vision loss is incredibly varied, but common in the DeafBlind community are the types you showed in Level 3 - dark hole in the centre (macular degeneration) or tunnel vision (retinitis pigmentosa). In the disability community generally the terms "low vision" and Blind are preferred over vision impairment/vision impaired. Same goes with deafness - Deaf and Hard of Hearing/HoH is preferred over hearing impaired. But the community is diverse! Some people do use the terms hearing/vision impaired to describe themselves.
I have been using this font on Google docs and omgggg it's amazing. It's simple enough that it looks good for everything and is super easy on the eyes. You are a magician sir.
Dear Linus, thank you for going in-depth with this typeface! I just started working in the Disabled Student's Office at Uni and there came into contact with this piece of art, so I enjoyed this video very much today!
This is amazing work. Fonts like this help even the people without vision impairment. For example Lexend font was so useful to me after I discovered that it helps me to read so much faster.
Hey man, I just wanted to say I'm really loving this design content - the way you break down these design concepts are really engaging and fun to learn from. It's so hard finding stuff to learn from, but not only do you present some interesting and cool ideas, but you're also super engaging. Keep it up! Hope I hope to see a lot more! Love from straya
This is incredibly cool. The curriculum my school uses has a font similar to Calibri, even in student facing materials. It makes it so much harder than needed for early readers who are still learning letter sounds and sounding out words.
My experience with mathematics and physics has taught me to really appreciate letter/number/symbol forms with clearly distinguishable homoglyphs, so much so that my handwriting actually changed to make homoglyphs more visually distinct (at least when writing mathematical expressions). This wasn't limited to the Roman/English alphabet, as Greek letters are also frequently used in in maths and physics, so you also have homoglyph pairs like 'v' and 'ν' (lowercase nu) to contend with as well.
I'm so glad I found this channel, it scratches an itch I never even knew I had. I'm fascinated by typography and graphic design and the little intricacies that go into all of it, and the way you explain it all is endlessly captivating and friendly. Lovely stuff!
Thank you for making this video! I've started using this in my videos and thumbnails and am working on using it for my other content as well. Thanks for shining a spotlight on this!
Awesome video as I've come to expect. Also, thank you very much for giving a slight description of what was coming on the exaggeration of the "Ryans" features. I'm not comfortable looking at distortions and your description gave me enough time to look away until the session was over. Thanks!
This is such an awesome project! It's really inspiring to see a lot of designers putting so much effort into making accessibility the norm, and then making it free for the public.
i have Bilateral Glaucoma. this font does solve a lot of issues that i have trying to read something fast or from a far distance. i can't thank enough the people that made this project possible. and i hope to see this font in more places in the future
Dude the animations and general visual quality in this video is top notch. The font overlays, the wagly serifs slide out of letters, gaps open up, so great!
Thank you, Linus. This is a great font. I'm incredibly tired of the LlI1 poor differentiation in the majority of fonts used. As a person with a first name starting with capital I (India), I've had two job onboardings misspelled from I to L and having to recreate all my user accounts. Hopefully big software designers understand that most people require this type of clarity in font usage.
Thank you so much for showcasing this font! Aesthetic is so undervalued in accessible design, and this font is gorgeous. I myself am not low vision or blind, but I have severe nearsightedness and astigmatism and even with glasses or contacts tend to experience double and blurred vision and it can get exhausting to have to focus my eyes to read for long periods of time, it's so cool to see a font that I don't have to do that with. As well as that, my brother is dyslexic and although that wasn't the primary intention of the font a lot of the letter differentiation choices make this perfect for him too! He tends to hate "dyslexic friendly" fonts such as Open Dyslexic, I showed him this and he was thrilled by all the tiny details, especially the shape of the lowercase i and a. Thrilled to have found a font that's so thoughtfully designed with such clear care and love.
Download here: brailleinstitute.org/freefont or from Google Fonts. Really honored to have had the opportunity to contribute to this project. You can find more links in the video description if you want to find out more.
There is a typo in the thumbnail, unless it's meant to say "accessiblity"
Otherwise great video!
@ See 8:43. You don't even need to download the font thanks to the magic of google fonts
i wish there was a monospaced version of this for programmers who could benefit from accessibility too :(
@@jemesmemes9026 Most programming fonts already make a big effort to distinguish characters like 0O and Ili1! and I don't know that this would be a revolutionary addition but more choice is always good.
Echoing the statements of James, a monospaced version for programmers would be greatly appreciated.
As a developer, I'll start using this font on every project. Besides improving accessibility, I think it is a beautiful font.
Monospaced version of the font would be great
@@nsanooj This! As a programmer, having an easy to read mono font for your code is super useful. Plus I'm sure there are plenty of programmers who have vision impairments but want the vertical legibility of monospaced fonts.
JetBrains Mono is a font for developers that follows many of the same ideas (and it's FOSS as well)
@@masonbarber871 JetBrains Mono, IBM Plex Mono, B612 Mono, Red Hat Mono, and Source Code Pro are your best candidates currently. Cousine, which is metrically compatible with Courier New, might also work for you.
@@elzearcontelly2651I love Jetbrains Mono, haven't used any other monospaced font since I found it a few years ago.
As a programmer, if there was a monospaced version of this font I would switch my code editors to it in a heartbeat.
For just about everyone who programs, mono is king, avoiding homoglyphs is vital, and ease of reading is excellent. Atkinson Hyperlegible solves two out of these three masterfully, we just need a monospaced version.
Try the font SF MONO in your editor.
I've enjoyed looking at my code in this font even if I haven't the slightest ability to follow the logic :-)
@@hi3694 Elzear Contelly
1 year ago (edited)
JetBrains Mono is a font for developers that follows many of the same ideas (and it's FOSS as well)
Try with IBM Plex Mono
Source Code Pro is fairly good. It distinguishes between its 1 and lowercase L well. Unlike Atkinson Hyperlegible, it also has true italics.
Fira Code is by far my favourite, it has ligatures that make certain characters join such as => becoming a 2 lined arrow. If you don't want this you can get Fira Mono. The font is far more legible than others I've tried and can look at it all day
I'm so happy someone is addressing the lowercase L vs uppercase i problem. It drives me crazy!!
I remember once reading an article in a magazine about a new type for road signs - Clearview. They stated that despite ALL CAPS is large, it's not as well readable as properly designed Capitalised Lower Case, because people read words as units, not as individual letters. No wonder, Clearview also had that lower case l tail. Too bad it hasn't been considered for my country...
The only downside is that it ruins SiIvagunner's channel (it's pronounced "see-vuh" btw).
@@kpeguyebbers850 also AkSpartanKiIIer, but I doubt anyone else remembers that nowadays.
@@kpeguyebbers850 ExactIy what l had in mind! l reaIIy enjoy that channeI and wouId miss that IittIe gimmick, but it is what it is
Lots of fonts address this problem, but not enough imo. Every font, in my opinion, should have a tail on the lowercase L _at the least_
This is a really great breakdown of why the balance between aesthetics and character differentiation in legibility. My clients are often very into the idea of accessibility, and I've been asked a few times if "dyslexic" fonts should be used in a more mainstream way, and struggle to explain the intricacies of why these kinds of super-differentiated, often very wonky, typefaces are not always the most accessible. I'll just send this video from now on instead of trying to explain it myself!
Many love to defend the useage of Comic Sans for this reason too, saying it is an accessible font and should be used everywhere. But I heavily disagree, beyond for personal use, of course. Personally, having ADHD I feel Comic Sans is harder to read because I focus on its ugliness and caricatureish wonkiness instead for focusing on the text itself. I usually say that to defend myself and other people like me with same problems. I wonder if this Atkinson Hyperlegible is a good font for dyslexic, I hope so, because it is a font I can heartily accept. It is wonky but in a well adjusted way.
@@goldenelfboots4595 Have you ever seen Comic Neue? It aims to fix the shortcomings of Sans while still keeping it's legibility quite nice.
Such an amazing project, and that it’s free to use so broadly is even better! Thanks for your work on this, and sharing it with us, too.
Hi George.
It's neat seeing some of the things I've added to my own handwriting to improve legibility in math work (flagged 1, serif l, and backslash 0) be used in a real font. The only thing it's missing is crossed 7s.
Don't forget the crossed z's in order to seperate them from 2's
I added crossed z’s to my handwriting after “2z” turned into “22” too many times.
@@reginamarck4508, you could try using cyrillic "з" which has a descender when handwriting.
Andrii Babarytskyi That runs the risk of being too similar to “3” though.
I recall reading once even that some cyrillic typewriters used to just have one key for both 3 and Ze, since they were so similar that it was easier to not have to make an extra key for 3.
@@GrizonII well, it is true for printed glyphs, but handwritten “з” has a descender similar to “g”, which makes it quite distinctive from 3.
As someone who has dabbled in subtitles, specifically fansubs, prioritizing legibility of on-screen text has been a #1 goal of mine. So to have a good looking font such as this that has legibility as its main focus is honestly a god-send. Thanks for letting everyone know about this font, as I’m pretty much going to be using it from now on for any subtitles that I work on!
Real subtitles that can be turned on and off are better than burned-in subtitles.
As someone with dyslexia, i am very happy to see you cover accessibility in font design! Thank you to you and the rest of the team for creating this very helpful font
So is my instinct correct that the specific effort put in to differentiate similar letterforms also makes this a good dyslexia font, without the problems inherent to Comic Sans?
i've already replaced all my google docs using comic sans with this.
@@Altoclarinets Yes. One of the aspects of dyslexia is that we often mix up letters that have similar forms (a 'q' can look like a 'p', even though they are mirror images of each other) or that look confusing when clumped together (an 'n' and an 'm' look similar when in the middle of a word, such as in 'minimum').
The more distinguishable the letters are, the easier it is to read for most dyslexic people.
came to the comments to say the same thing! I've loved the open dyslexic font but I'm super happy to see more dyslexic-friendly fonts.
I would definitely consider it an improvement over Dyslexie and OpenDyslexic. I'm just starting to learn typography but I can say just visually I like Hyperlegible a lot more.
BIA should reach out to Apple, Microsoft and Google to have the Atkinson Hyperlegible included by default in their future releases of Windows, Mac OS, iOS and Android.
@@kreuner11 included ≠ replace.
And I'm not talking of the UI, all I said was to distribute it in the default set of available fonts.
@@mesteme I think the main idea behind Google purchasing the font is so that you have to use their services if you want to design something with Hyperlegible. Big tech doesn't give two shuts about any of us if it doesn't benefit their bottom line.
@@kirayamato080300 google didn't buy it, just distributing it. The font is free.
@@kirayamato080300 you clown, Google fonts allows you to download the font so you can use it on your pc, and also hosts the font so you can embed it in a website.
Getting Atkinson Hyperlegible included as a system font would go a long way toward encouraging its adoption. For example, when collaborating on a Microsoft Word document, if I send it to someone who doesn’t have the same font, it won’t display correctly - this can sometimes result in drastic formatting changes. This hassle alone makes us all want to stick with system fonts even though there are better professional fonts.
(While you can embed fonts in Word files _if_ permitted by the license agreement, it’s not perfect, and it greatly increases file size.)
This makes my disabled yet design nerd self extremely happy! Congratulations on working on a project that I know will positively impact the lives of many.
I'm a designer from Brazil, and my wife has low vision. We LOVED your video, and really liked the new type. We've been using APHONT up and down, but we will try Atkinson Hyperlegible, and if it suit us, we're changing for sure. Thanks, and keep up the good work. :)
One thing I noticed, when typing my own name- When I type "r" and "i" next to each other, the thing sticking out of the "i" is at the same level of the thing sticking out of the "r". Combined with how the thing sticking out of the "r" does not curl down like in most typical fonts, and how the "i" does not have that bottom flat line, the sequence "ri" in this font looks a lot more like an "n" than in the average font.
Huh, these changes remind me a lot of what's done with monospace fonts meant for programming. Slashed/dotted zeroes, differentiating I/l/1, etc. It's another situation where you really don't want to have potentially confusing near-homoglyphs.
Exactly. My first thought was to use this in my programming editor.
If there was a monospace version of it I'd definitely try it as an editor font.
In fact, I've designed bitmap monospace fonts and a lot of these things show up in my designs (the main differences are that the same pseudoserif that appears on "i", on my fonts also often appear on "j" and "l".
Very nice video and beautiful font. As a teacher it made me think of incorporating this typeface as a standard on the documents I make for the class.
I think that's a great idea! I remember in school all of my teachers would either use Arial, Times New Roman, or on a particularly bad day Comic Sans. I think Atkinson Hyperlegible is aesthetically way more appealing than any of those and of course more accessible.
"The larger the x-height as a proportion of total vertical space, the more legible"
110% X-HEIGHT BABYYYYY
Even for me who have normal vision, this font is still super helpful and improved my reading speed.
This is incredible. As a graphic designer who works in disability justice this is often an issue I run into. I'd love to see your take on typefaces for neurodivergencies like dyslexia and ADHD. While existing fonts like OpenDyslexic and Dyslexie have given it a shot, the feedback I've received from dyslexic people has been mixed at best. Some time back I shared a meme in a disabled student group chat I started and it was met with excitement and enthusiasm! The meme involved a way of typing that made the first letter of key words bolder and jump out more, therefore leading the eye along without resistance and assisting many ADHD people read without becoming distracted. It's definitely an interesting and necessary design challenge
As I have grown older I have gone from perfect vision, to needing reading glasses all the time.
Things that drive me mad :-
* Cooking instructions on ready meals - Small fonts, no contrast in a sea of text.
*Sell by /use by dates on food in the supermarket - hard to locate, small and badly printed.
* menus in restaurants - fancy fonts, poor contrast, tiny size, poor lighting.
I am really enjoying your videos. Thanks Linus.
I find use-by dates tend to look like they were printed by a dot-matrix printer of some sort. Which might very well be the case, especially on curved surfaces like jars. I can imagine pins hitting a ribbon that can flex to the curve of the glass might very well be the best way to get the job done.
@@Roxor128 oftentimes on bottles at least, they’re actually spray printed on with a jet of air as they go down the conveyor belt. Sometimes they warp if something disrupts the belt
This is awesome even for people with no serious visual impairment such as me, as there always are situations where the visibility of the text itself gets hindered in one way or another.
The way I think about it is we all benefit if those who have always been disadvantaged aren't left behind. There is no detriment to universal design, improving accessibility, legibility, etc, for anyone - similar to what Linus said, it isn't a zero sum game
@@RamtheCowy I use glasses I can see my phone up close but arms length away I barely read. With these fonts I can read it easier even without my glasses from arms length, still hard but hey it helps (:
This font is stunning. Even ignoring its functional purpose, it's still a very elegant and understandable typeface. Applause for the Braille Institute for putting this font together.
As a person with ADHD i too strongly appreciate highly legible fonts, I'm way less likely to misread with good fonts
As a literacy specialist and trainer with an Indigenous Corporation - iATSIC - training rangers here in Queensland, we have decided to use Hyperlegible in all our resources. Thank you to all involved in creating it.
I'm a teacher and I've been using this font in all the material I make for my students and some of them have asked me about the font, because it's easier on their eyes as they say, so you and the entire team should be really proud of what you've accomplished 👏
My first name starts with an I (uppercase i, not a lowercase L), and sans-serif fonts make my life so much more difficult than it needs to be. I've resorted to putting my address in code blocks anytime I can, because monospace fonts are generally speaking serif fonts, but otherwise there's a 99% chance someone will assume I misspelled my own name with a lowercase initial.
I feel for you! I've always found this very irritating, and I don't really understand why it's not considered more of an issue than your usual Comic Sans misuse meme. I cannot recall how many times I needed to copy and paste into Notepad to find out what a string of characters really was when you don't have cultural hints to distinguish between lowercase L and uppercase I. For example just Google "Ievan Polkka" (correct) vs "Levan Polkka" (incorrect), you'll be amazed!
@@matt4054yt Fwiw, my name is almost 1:1 the same as your example (except they rounded off the bottom of the V), and to any Welsh person (origin of my name) it would be obvious that the first letter is an I and not an L. I take more offense to people not just copy-pasting what I send them than I do to them mixing up the order of the vowels or just altogether butchering my name, because this mistake is almost always digital as I use a serif I with a thick line top and bottom or a cursive I when writing.
This really is a much bigger issue than the Comic Sans MS thing, I very much agree. All fonts should distinguish between letters, but I'm not sure what sans-serif solution there would be for the I and L?
@@daylen577 I like the way Atkinson Hyperlegible solved it (at 5:14 in the video). It obviously breaks the sans serif aesthetics, but a major point of this video is the function vs design balance and tradeoffs.
Matthieu Houriet I’d like if more sans-serif fonts would add slight serifs just on capital “i”; I feel like that could really help for distinguishing them without breaking the aesthetic too much-thinking of how, in my experience at least, people’s (non-cursive) handwriting tends to not replicate serifs on most letters but often will on capital “i” (and sometimes J or 1 too).
@@GrizonII I don't think they need to be "slight". Simply treat the top and bottom of the I as crossbars rather than serifs.
As someone who used to design fonts, excellent breakdown of the key components that make this typeface succeed in its vision. I’ll have to take a look at it myself and study it
Pun intended?
You told me to, so here I am. As someone with severe astigmatic myopia (with a -12 spherical index in one eye), even with corrective lenses, I do deeply appreciate humanist touches in typefaces. I'd also like to thank you for the role you played, invisible as it may seem sometimes; as not enough people can appreciate kerning without being told directly about it.
I work in web dev, going to try to get any new project I work on to use this as the default font, amazing video mate
im glad to see accessibility covered for typography and design! its not something thats talked about a lot
As a disabled person, and someone who writes about disability issues, THIS IS SO COOL! thanks for teaching us
This is so genuinely cool, good job, and I'm so glad that it's freely available. Money and availability can often stand in the way of accessibility, so I'm very glad this final additional barrier is removed here.
I never knew how much went into designing a font. Excellent video; I've been binging all your content for weeks now.
Ohhh i'd really like a monospace version of this font for programming, love it
I'm a product designer who heads up the inclusive design practice at my start-up. I can't wait to share this video and typeface with my team. Awesome work!
Hey Linus,
I dont know if you read comments on old videos, but I feel like I need to tell you about the impact this video had on me.
I am quite fond of accessible design due to a multitude of reasons. I was watching your videos before this one came out and still remember installing and using it for documents of my local club.
I since have written my bachelor thesis on the subject of accessibility, especially for government communication. The topic was to a large part inspired by this video and it enabled me to take an educated look at the document as a whole. Not only the building and facilities need to be accessible, but also the content and design of our communication, including the font. I have since received my degree and will start working at the councils office where I have written my thesis.
I am still hopeful that I can integrate accessible design in our workflow. Maybe we'll have a process that is way more accessible soon.
I love you and your videos, they have tought me a lot and they reinvigoured my interest in typography and logo design.
As some other commentator put it: You really are criminally underrated!
Returning to this video after using this font as my browser default since it released and I can confidently say it's improved my life. Every readable typeface I tried before was either ugly, completely ruined formatting, or both. Finally, I feel I can actually browse the web without getting a migraine every thirty minutes, so thank you so much!
This kind of super nerdy breakdown video is what I absolutely love, and you somehow make it entirely accessible still!
I love this! I am doing signage for a new building and I am going to try and use this font as the base for directional signage so that it's easier for people with poor vision to navigate.
As a dyslexic person this is super interesting, I would love a learning disability accessible font that is not ugly comic Sans, typeface makes big difference in how long I can read something before becoming to tried.
This channel is so criminally undersubbed for how incredible the content is. I hope the algorithm gods are kinder to you, because this is one of the top 10 channels on this site IMO 👏
I love your channel. I have zero connection to design but I just like learning about new things and I absolutely love the aesthetics of your videos. The animations, the video editing, the graphic design. Everything absolute on point. Presented in a super pleasent way. Keep up the fantastic work!
24 years ago, I visited a Frutiger exhibition, which was a mixture of his graphics and typography works. And I purchased a little booklet about the history and creation of his font Frutiger. One of the figures that fascinated me the most was his way of testing legibility on paper. Back in the day, there was no easy way to apply a blur filter, like we can do so quickly today. So instead he used hatching to achieve a similar effect. Very "graphic designer". This image is so burnt into my mind and always comes up whenever accessibility pops up as a subject.
Adrian is simply one of my design heroes and I was so happy to see him and his work mentioned here again.
And maybe I am too old but I don't associate OCR fonts with sci-fi. To me they are synonymous with machine readable checks :) which now feels so far far back in time.
This is brilliant! As a diabetic with thankfully good eyesight so far, I’m aware of the impact ease of reading will have in my future and does to others anyway. I’ll be substituting this in for Helvetica wherever I can!
Selectively adding serifs back in to a sans-serif font to remove homoglyphs is very smart, and the way it's been done in this font whilst not sacrificing aesthetics is genius!
as someone who doesnt have as bad of eyesight as the target audience of this font, blurring the words is a good way for me to sympathise with their struggles and it illustrates the point cleanly
I ended up switching to Hyperlegible for my WoW UI and I can tell you that it easily improved my ability to read quickly and understand my guildies correctly in guild chat. I had particular issues with a vs e vs c, o vs 0, and so on. Bless this font for existing.
Something I noticed about this font is the considerations made to make it easier to read work not just for people with poor sight. The font is definitely easier to read especially at small sizes
What a fantastic video! I graduated graphic design and had always dreamed to work in type design, though somehow ended up falling in love with medicine and ended up in med school after some trials with my own health. Regardless, type design still holds a very special place in my heart - something nearly impossible to explain to fellow med students, especially in Brazil where typography is often undervalued even by graphic designers.
This feels like a marriage of lots of themes that have been very important to me: disability, accessibility, typography… Lovely!
Edit: on a side-note, one of my closest friends in design school had dyslexia and always reminded us how differentiation between different letters helped her. I remember her finding Futura a nightmare hahah
Unrelated sidenote, when I first saw one of your videos I genuinely thought it was from a channel with over 1 million subscribers just because of the sheer quality of your videos. They always look and sound professional. I was surprised when I saw I was wrong. Keep up the good word, cause I know there's many more like me who love these types of videos who will find this channel!
This font made reading the terms and conditions for the font way easier than normal! Downloaded and ready for use.
Even for making tags and signs for stuff in a workplace, especially in like a factory for example where communication is vital, replacing Arial with this font is an incredible idea. Even if it's just for the fact it handles homoglyphs and looks neutral like Helvetica. Too I know in my factory we have a lot of older folks with vision difficulties, so they would definitely appreciate it.
Strangely enough, I'm redoing my handwriting font and this is actually incredibly valuable to that. I'm always looking for ways to improve accessibility for my art. This is immensely helpful in my pursuits.
I just got myself a gig doing some editorial work with people with difficulty reading in mind so this comes as a godsend. Will definetly be trying it out!
This has been my favorite font for a while now. I am nearsighted with astigmatism and my vision is very blurry on dark theme sites/apps etc. I can't read high contrast dark theme at all. Sometimes I will write a userstyle to change the colors but sometimes this is not really feasible due to how the page's code is structured. So my solution to legibility for my own use is one userstyle that just blanket changes everything into Atkinson Hyperlegible. It's not perfect because my vision issues are often due to color and size, but it genuinely does help me a great deal in everyday life. I can't live without it.
I know the online RPG site Roll20 just added a lot of user-selectable fonts, many based on accessibility. I'll suggest adding this. Thanks for highlighting many of the features.
This has been super, super helpful for me! I'm based in Melbourne, and working on opening a not-for-profit, social enterprise cafe (should be due for opening in about a month, covid permitting) set within a new community centre.
As part of our social vision we're trying to model being a welcoming environment. Thinking about how this is expressed through our typography and design choices has been really helpful. One of our projects is partnering with local council to mode being a dementia friendly cafe: making our menus, forms, and other paperwork, easier to read with good type is really great!
Thanks!
I think this font has that super neat handwriting look to it, it's seriously making me consider switching from my main font of helvetica. You know the type of handwriting I'm talking about, the type you see in all those handwriting videos or the kind that the one girl in class busts out and proclaims "my handwriting is so bad"
let me just start with: THANK YOU! That's a fantastic video about an even more fantastic work that will certainly help lots of people!! God bless you!
Amazing breakthrough! I've now adopted this typeface for all my training work and email. And I've become keen to promote its use to others - thank you!
i watched this video with my glasses off since my natural vision is in the legal blindness range, and i've gotta say that i really can read atkinson hyperlegible better than other fonts even when i can barely see 👀
i think i'll go and donate to the creators, they deserve it :)
I'm having troubles to see small fonts lately, and I'm a fan of dark mode in everything, so any kind of help is appreciated. I was very happy to see that isn't only Google docs online options and I downloaded it succesfully in my computer. Thanks a lot for this.
Rewatching cause since seeing it after it first came out, Atkinson Hyperlegible has been my default font, and I’m not even visually impaired! But it’s been such a gift in school to be able to reduce the font size of my notes while still keeping everything readable 😊
Thank you, I frequently write documents that have to be legible on paper in low light, this font seems like an ideal fit!
I... Why am i crying? This is absolutely wonderful, I'm so grateful.
This is theoretically so easy and such a small step. But someone has to think about it. If it helps, it's definitely worth it. Good job
As someone who has lived their entire life being legally blind, I'd like to thank you for trying to make things a little easier. It almost seems like legibility is an afterthought in so many products..from packaging to web design and text in video games. Something as simple as telling whether the instructions on a baking mix box say "3/4 or 1/4" cup can turn into a horrendous chore f or someone with visual impairment.
Thank you again for being a part of this project. You have helped produce something that will make countless lives a little easier.
I thought I would come back to this video and say I've been using the font since this video first came out. It's great! Really love it, especially the capital O/zero difference and capital i lower L difference. Both very useful for my science degree right now. Thank you!!
This is fantastic and completely fascinating! I can definitely see how this font would be super beneficial to some DeafBlind people I know. Vision loss is incredibly varied, but common in the DeafBlind community are the types you showed in Level 3 - dark hole in the centre (macular degeneration) or tunnel vision (retinitis pigmentosa).
In the disability community generally the terms "low vision" and Blind are preferred over vision impairment/vision impaired. Same goes with deafness - Deaf and Hard of Hearing/HoH is preferred over hearing impaired. But the community is diverse! Some people do use the terms hearing/vision impaired to describe themselves.
That's it! That's the font for my business. Thank you! I'll spread the word.
I love that your videos have real subtitles!
I have been using this font on Google docs and omgggg it's amazing. It's simple enough that it looks good for everything and is super easy on the eyes. You are a magician sir.
That's a good looking font, and incredibly practical for as many people as possible. Definitely implementing this in future projects
Nice font! I'm going to start using it now. ty for adding it to google for free and not making it some complicated task to get
Dear Linus, thank you for going in-depth with this typeface! I just started working in the Disabled Student's Office at Uni and there came into contact with this piece of art, so I enjoyed this video very much today!
I started using this font 6 months ago, and I continue to use it everywhere I can.
as someone who is nowhere near blind but still can't see anything without glasses, love to see stuff like this!
This is amazing work. Fonts like this help even the people without vision impairment. For example Lexend font was so useful to me after I discovered that it helps me to read so much faster.
Seeing Moon (2009) crop up as using a "dated sci-fi cliche font" had me rolling. Awesome information, thank you!
Thanks for sharing. I am going try and use it for as many client projects as I can.
Hey man, I just wanted to say I'm really loving this design content - the way you break down these design concepts are really engaging and fun to learn from. It's so hard finding stuff to learn from, but not only do you present some interesting and cool ideas, but you're also super engaging.
Keep it up! Hope I hope to see a lot more! Love from straya
This is incredibly cool. The curriculum my school uses has a font similar to Calibri, even in student facing materials. It makes it so much harder than needed for early readers who are still learning letter sounds and sounding out words.
My experience with mathematics and physics has taught me to really appreciate letter/number/symbol forms with clearly distinguishable homoglyphs, so much so that my handwriting actually changed to make homoglyphs more visually distinct (at least when writing mathematical expressions). This wasn't limited to the Roman/English alphabet, as Greek letters are also frequently used in in maths and physics, so you also have homoglyph pairs like 'v' and 'ν' (lowercase nu) to contend with as well.
This font is amazing. I'm practicing typing and I often have trouble reading rare words. After using this font I've never misread them again
Thank you for this video and for your work! I'll be using this in all communications for our non-profit moving forward.
I'm so glad I found this channel, it scratches an itch I never even knew I had. I'm fascinated by typography and graphic design and the little intricacies that go into all of it, and the way you explain it all is endlessly captivating and friendly. Lovely stuff!
Thank you for making this video! I've started using this in my videos and thumbnails and am working on using it for my other content as well. Thanks for shining a spotlight on this!
Awesome video as I've come to expect.
Also, thank you very much for giving a slight description of what was coming on the exaggeration of the "Ryans" features. I'm not comfortable looking at distortions and your description gave me enough time to look away until the session was over. Thanks!
I got it on google docs and set it to my default! Honestly legibility is the main function of a font to me.
Would you ever consider doing a “font-making tutorial” of sorts? I’m really interested in the process
This is such an awesome project! It's really inspiring to see a lot of designers putting so much effort into making accessibility the norm, and then making it free for the public.
Nice start, eagerly awaiting this supporting more languages.
i have Bilateral Glaucoma. this font does solve a lot of issues that i have trying to read something fast or from a far distance.
i can't thank enough the people that made this project possible. and i hope to see this font in more places in the future
As a graphic designer and ophthalmic assistant, I thoroughly enjoyed seeing two of my passions come together in this video.
Dude the animations and general visual quality in this video is top notch. The font overlays, the wagly serifs slide out of letters, gaps open up, so great!
Thank you, Linus. This is a great font. I'm incredibly tired of the LlI1 poor differentiation in the majority of fonts used. As a person with a first name starting with capital I (India), I've had two job onboardings misspelled from I to L and having to recreate all my user accounts. Hopefully big software designers understand that most people require this type of clarity in font usage.
I love it. I'll advocate for it's use in the social science paper in which I work.
This typeface made me feel goosebumps and butterflies in my stomach, as only some songs did to me when I was a teenager. That is...beautiful.
Thank you so much for showcasing this font! Aesthetic is so undervalued in accessible design, and this font is gorgeous. I myself am not low vision or blind, but I have severe nearsightedness and astigmatism and even with glasses or contacts tend to experience double and blurred vision and it can get exhausting to have to focus my eyes to read for long periods of time, it's so cool to see a font that I don't have to do that with. As well as that, my brother is dyslexic and although that wasn't the primary intention of the font a lot of the letter differentiation choices make this perfect for him too! He tends to hate "dyslexic friendly" fonts such as Open Dyslexic, I showed him this and he was thrilled by all the tiny details, especially the shape of the lowercase i and a. Thrilled to have found a font that's so thoughtfully designed with such clear care and love.
52K subscribers? So awesome to witness this bump, seemingly overnight! Congratulations!
I tested using it as a subtitle font and it's absolutely brilliant!