Accessible fonts for easier readability: the basics
Fonts affect accessibility for visually impaired and dyslexic users. Read our guide to understand how to choose accessible fonts for websites and other documents that are easy to read for everyone.
Accessible typography
On this page we are going to look at some myths and facts about accessible and usable typography as relevant to APA Style. The main takeaway is this: There do not have to be trade-offs—you can have great, expressive, nuanced typography that also meets or exceeds all regulatory and functional accessibility requirements.
Accessible-DfA
Accessible-DfA font has been designed to provide maximum legibility for everybody.
Andika
Andika is a sans-serif font family designed and optimized especially for literacy use. It supports almost the complete range of Unicode characters for these scripts, including a comprehensive range of diacritics and a large set of symbols useful for linguistics and literacy work.
APHont Font
PHont (pronounced Ay’-font), was developed by APH specifically for low vision readers. APHont embodies characteristics that have been shown to enhance reading speed, comprehension, and comfort for large print users.
The entire APHont Suite is available free-of-charge to qualified users for non-commercial purposes.
Atkinson Hyperlegible
Atkinson Hyperlegible, named after the founder of the Braille Institute, has been developed specifically to increase legibility for readers with low vision, and to improve comprehension.
B612
B612 is an highly legible open source font family designed and tested to be used on aircraft cockpit screens.
Better Web Type
Charis SIL
Charis SIL is a Unicode-based font family that supports the wide range of languages that use the Latin and Cyrillic scripts. It is specially designed to make long texts pleasant and easy to read, even in less than ideal reproduction and display environments.
Dyslexie Font
Being challenged by dyslexia? Dyslexie font motivates you to start reading more. With the innovative tools, we clear the way through the letter jungle.
FS Me Font
When most of us go about everyday tasks, we take for granted the reading that’s involved, on instructions, labels and so on. For people with learning disabilities, reading is made much harder by certain fonts. FS Me is designed specifically to improve legibility for people with learning disabilities.
Inclusive Sans
Inclusive Sans is a text font designed for accessibility and readability. It is inspired by the friendly personality of contemporary neo-grotesques while incorporating key features to make it highly legible in all uses.
Introducing accessibility in typography
Accessible typography considerations start with choosing type. When selecting typefaces, seek out designs that have legibility built in alongside the other attributes you like. There is no single answer about which fonts are most accessible for everyone, but there are some things that can make a typeface more accessible to some people.
Lexie Readable
Lexie Readable (formerly Lexia Readable) was designed with accessibility and legibility in mind, an attempt to capture the strength and clarity of Comic Sans without the comic book associations.
Features like the non-symmetrical b and d, and the handwritten forms of a and g may help dyslexic readers. You can read more about the story behind Lexie Readable in the Kernel.
Merriweather
Merriweather was designed to be a text face that is pleasant to read on screens. It features a very large x height, slightly condensed letterforms, a mild diagonal stress, sturdy serifs and open forms.
OpenDyslexic
OpenDyslexic is a typeface designed against some common symptoms of dyslexia. If you like the way you are able to read this page, and others, then this typeface is for you!
Read Regular
Read Regular aims at preventing a neglect of dyslexia, creating a more confident feeling regarding the problems that occur with dyslexia.
Readex Pro
Could a new typeface make it easier for the more than 400 million Arabic speakers around the world to read?
Type designers Dr. Nadine Chahine and Thomas Jockin joined forces to find out. They created Readex Pro in Arabic using the methodology behind Lexend, made for Latin. The name Readex was chosen as a shortened form of “reading expanded.”
Rising » FS Me: ‘The accessible type’
FS Me is a typeface family designed by Jason Smith of Fontsmith. Developed with Mencap, a leading UK charity for people with learning disabilities, it was designed to meet, and then exceed, the recommendations of government accessibility guidelines.
Source Sans 3
Source Sans Pro, Adobe's first open source typeface family, was designed by Paul D. Hunt. It is a sans serif typeface intended to work well in user interfaces.
The effect of a specialized dyslexia font, OpenDyslexic, on reading rate and accuracy
A single-subject alternating treatment design was used to investigate the extent to which a specialized dyslexia font, OpenDyslexic, impacted reading rate or accuracy compared to two commonly used fonts when used with elementary students identified as having dyslexia.
Tiresias
Tiresias is a family of TrueType sans-serif typefaces that were designed with the aim of legibility by people with impaired vision at the Scientific Research Unit of Royal National Institute of Blind People in London.
Typography in Inclusive Design Part 1: 8 key tips for accessible typography
Fonts affect accessibility for visually impaired and dyslexic users. Read our guide to understand how to choose accessible fonts for websites and other documents that are easy to read for everyone.