12 ms·

Atkinson Hyperlegible Font

• fold3 4y ago
  I also find the website confusing, the font is available here however https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Atkinson+Hyperlegible https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Atkinson+Hyperlegible
  • jonnycomputer 4y ago
    Thank you; couldn't get the download link to work.
    • cbsmith 4y ago
      The Braille Institute site makes the file available by http instead of https, which a lot of browsers will reject for security reasons.
      • tadfisher 4y ago
        I wonder which nation-state will exploit Windows font rendering and MITM the Braille Institute with a malicious payload. Iran, surely?
  • npteljes 4y ago
    Also here, if one would like to avoid Google somewhat https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/atkinson-hyperlegible https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/atkinson-hyperlegible
  • chronogram 4y ago
    GitHub link: https://github.com/ThomasJockin/readexpro https://github.com/ThomasJockin/readexpro
    • chipotle_coyote 4y ago
      That is not a link to this font, unless Readex Pro is a rebranded Atkinson Hyperlegible. :) (From the Readme file, I'm pretty sure it isn't.) However: https://github.com/googlefonts/atkinson-hyperlegible https://github.com/googlefonts/atkinson-hyperlegible
      • chronogram 4y ago
        Oops you're right, Readex is the rename of Lexend. Sorry!
• wcerfgba 4y ago
  Are there any monospaced fonts like this, with a focus on hyperlegibility?
  • epgui 4y ago
    There are a number of very nice monospace typefaces that have lots of character variants so you can essentially pick and choose different letter styles (dotted, crossed or regular zeros, etc). I personally love Fira Code with its ligatures.
    • vanderZwan 4y ago
      I love Fira Code. I suspect Iosevka is the winner when it comes to customization though: https://typeof.net/Iosevka/ https://typeof.net/Iosevka/ You can basically mimic features of almost any other big name among monospace fonts. The only downside I can think of is that it updates really often and the website doesn't have a way to save your customizations, so upgrading is a drag. Given that it's a free font I'm not complaining though.
      • epgui 4y ago
        Yes, that's another great one!
    • xmonkee 4y ago
      I recently discovered Fira code through https://www.codingfont.com/ https://www.codingfont.com/. I played with font names off, and Fira code won two times in a row :) I'm still amazed at how pleasant it looks on my screen.
      • Version467 4y ago
        Oh, I didn't know of https://www.codingfont.com/ https://www.codingfont.com/, the tournament style competition is pretty cool. I also like that you can turn off the labels. I've used Fira Code for years and tried to find an alternative on https://www.programmingfonts.org/ https://www.programmingfonts.org/ but it's very difficult comparing so many different options at once.
• fredleblanc 4y ago
  Also worth checking out is the Lexend family: https://www.lexend.com/ https://www.lexend.com/ I love seeing this push into legibility!
  • sumul 4y ago
    Yes! I auditioned dozens of fonts for the UI of https://figure.game https://figure.game and chose Lexend for its legibility, even at small sizes. It’s also got lots of understated charm and character (no pun intended) in my opinion. After reading about the project, I was very impressed with the reading fluency improvements reported, especially considering that (to me) it just looks like a very classy contemporary geometric sans.
• robertk 4y ago
  This seems like a great use case for those long zoom meeting codes.
• awoooo 4y ago
  Maybe opticians should use this as their eyesight testing font. If they don't already.
  • homarp 4y ago
    https://github.com/denispelli/Eye-Chart-Fonts https://github.com/denispelli/Eye-Chart-Fonts says "The Sloan font file was created by Denis Pelli based on Louise Sloan’s specifications and used for the Pelli-Robson contrast sensitivity chart (Pelli, Robson, & Wilkins, 1988). Louise Sloan’s design has been designated the US standard for acuity testing by the National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, Committee on Vision (NAS-NRC, 1980)."
  • kondro 4y ago
    One of the goals of eyesight testing fonts is to make it difficult to distinguish between certain letter shapes unless your vision is good enough to see them.
• OneLeggedCat 4y ago
  I like this idea, but when I go to the web page... > Download the Font… and change the world! By downloading, installing and/or using the font software, you confirm that you have read and agree to be bound by the terms of this End-User License Agreement... Sigh. I guess I need to read that EULA. Anyway, clicking on that then downloads a pdf rather than a nice link to some web page text. Sigh. So then anyway, trying to open that pdf then fails in the first two readers I tried. Sigh. Why must everything in the world be so hard? Fuck it, never mind. I'll let someone else change the world and wait for widespread adoption for this font to reach me in whatever other ways.
  • cyral 4y ago
    Not sure why it wouldn't open for you, but it opens fine in Chrome on Mac. I thought it would be some ridiculous 50 page legalese but it's actually only 1.5 pages long. it's basically a license similar to what you'd see on a Github repo.
    • soco 4y ago
      But why PDF at all? Is there a reason to put the online license in a PDF? Or any other places, like the restaurant menus? is there anybody who wants/needs to print the license or the restaurant menu?
      • bardworx 4y ago
        My guess? They use an agency to service their website and made the license in PDF so the org can change it without incurring additional cost of an update.
        • schwartzworld 4y ago
          To OPs point, a .TXT would work just as well.
          • bardworx 4y ago
• homarp 4y ago
  see also https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2022/08/an-update-to-the-atkinson-hyperlegible-font/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2022/08/an-update-to-the-atkinson-h...
• DiabloD3 4y ago
  Although the font did really try to nail its goal, I think Iosevka really nailed it. On top of that, somebody took some of what Atkinson did with their font, and applied it to Iosevka, using its insanely powerful ability to be customized wildly, to produce http://thedarnedestthing.com/iosevka%20hyperlegible http://thedarnedestthing.com/iosevka%20hyperlegible
  • moralestapia 4y ago
    FWIW, the font on that blog post is not Iosevka, You can find Iosevka here -> https://typeof.net/Iosevka/ https://typeof.net/Iosevka/
    • einpoklum 4y ago
      I find the 0.5em character width reduces readability somewhat. YMMV.
    • _emacsomancer_ 4y ago
      It is an Iosevka.
  • scubbo 4y ago
    Off-topic, but I think this might be the first time I've loaded a url including `%20` and had it actually render in my address bar as a space, rather than the percent-code. Is this something new in Firefox?
    • riquito 4y ago
      It's been like this in Firefox for quite some time
  • 5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
    the irony of having "hyperlegible" in the title when the title itself is barely legible. using a tiny 11px grey colour font, the body text is borderline while the navigation text is almost transparent.
• pmarreck 4y ago
  Did we hug it to death? Not loading over here EDIT: it loads now
• djcannabiz 4y ago
  I use this for my IDE, I dont have any vision issues or anything, its just really nice to look at :)
• aendruk 4y ago
  Their EULA looks similar to the OFL. I wonder why they didn’t just use that.
• NelsonMinar 4y ago
  I'm uncomfortable with people publishing work like this without studies to back up whether they work for their intended audience. I'm sure the Braille Institute is expert in needs of low vision readers. And the design certainly looks promising. But AFAICT no one has studied whether this font is actually more readable. https://www.maxkohler.com/notes/2021-02-16-atkinson-hyperreadable/ https://www.maxkohler.com/notes/2021-02-16-atkinson-hyperrea... The mess with the popular-but-not-effective OpenDyslexic isn't good for anyone except publishers wanting to tick off an "accessibility" checkbox. (Thinking particularly of the library e-reader Axis360 which includes only two fonts; a bad regular font and a "dyslexia font". Neither are particularly readable IMHO.) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5629233/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5629233/
  • taeric 4y ago
    This implies there is a study showing the open dyslexic font is actually not good? I can't say that would shock me, but it is surprising that they wouldn't have done some studies to justify the claims. Edit: the second link wasn't loading for me, so now I see the study. Bad phone internet... :( Again, still surprised they didn't have the counter study.
    • yellow_lead 4y ago
      That's the NIH study that was linked. > Results from this alternating treatment experiment show no improvement in reading rate or accuracy for individual students with dyslexia, as well as the group as a whole.
      • NelsonMinar 4y ago
        That's the key finding. And while "no effect" may sound harmless the Discussion section of the paper highlights all the ways having a popular ineffective solution is actively harmful to people with dyslexia.
        • taeric 4y ago
• mrunseen 4y ago
  It is more legible than your average "font-family: sans-serif” (aka Arial, Roboto, Helvetica) but it’s not that much of an “original idea”. For example Frutiger by Adrian Frutiger, a type family that a lot of airports use as it’s designed with legibility at long distances, or even the Verdana by Matthew Carter, ubiquitous web font that powers this and a lot of other websites’ typography that has specifically designed for legibility on low resolution screens, aren’t that less legible than this font. Still, I like the idea that some people on Braille Institute has decided to commission a typeface with a “free” license.
  • Gordonjcp 4y ago
    It looks almost exactly like Helvetica.
• juancn 4y ago
  Do they have data backing up their claims? Also, how does it compare to other high legibility fonts such as Highway Gothic? It seems like a promising font, but it needs testing.
• takoid 4y ago
  If anyone else is having trouble loading the page: https://archive.ph/ok1ro https://archive.ph/ok1ro.
• shakabrah 4y ago
  An aside: Why is it that most posts about a new product or project some people have put together is usually greeted with skepticism and negativity in HN comments? What is that all about? It is a pattern Ive continuously seen and it seems like only the true home runs receive any kind of praise. Most replies are either about lack of evidence or someone’s alternative preference. I see that latter one a good deal.
  • leeoniya 4y ago
    probably the same reason new JS frameworks get a lot of criticism. adding another one expands an already daunting array of choices to make, most often without a clear benefit, as seems to be the case here.
  • TheRealPomax 4y ago
    Because you are the easiest person to lie to, yourself. Just because you work in a field doesn't mean your assumptions are valid. The more people (or you yourself) consider you an expert in something, the more you should test your assumptions through studies etc. If you don't, then claiming you made a thing "for X" without any proof that X benefits from that means you've almost certainly lied to yourself, convinced yourself that lie was true, and are now perpetuating that lie by putting it on the internet. Especially when you do things based on your own experience, it's incredibly easy to forget that there are almost infinitely more people who are different and have different needs and experiences. And of course, your things can be just fine, but without proof of that, claiming that they are just tells people you have no idea whether what you did was actually worth anything, and that undermines your effort. The thing you made MIGHT actually be great! But it might also only be great for a super select few hyper-focussed people that you happened to ask for help (or not even, you might have purely relied on "your own past experiences"!), and be terrible in general. Make tiny claims centered around tiny groups (e.g. "I/my customers needed something better so I made this"), not a problem. Make big claims involving "everyone" (e.g. "we made a typeface that improves legibility")? Back them up with proof. Show the studies where you've pitched it against a wide set of other typefaces, and have people of all visual impairment levels perform (also scientificially justified for this purpose) tasks that hinge on legibility. (Because winning awards may be nice, but doesn't tell us anything. It just says "other people already liked this". It doesn't say anything about whether the thing you made is actually good)
• hermitcrab 4y ago
  I was talking to my opticians recently and he said "Everyone gets cataracts, PVDs[1] and macular degeneration, if they live long enough". So we should all be glad that people are working in this area. [1]Posterior Vitreous Detachment.
  • cratermoon 4y ago
    Over the past 2-3 years I went from needing reading glasses for small print to needing reading glasses for nearly everything in "normal"-sized print. I even keep HN at +125% (thanks, Chrome) because the default is too small. I still need my reading glasses at this magnification, but I don't want to magnify it too much more because of limited screen real-estate. This is just from normal age-related presbyopia. I'm hoping that as the tech-savvy population ages, more thought will be put into design for vision challenges. Honestly I very low expectations, though.
    • hermitcrab 4y ago
      Tech is mostly designed by young white English-speaking males and they tend to design with young white English-speaking males in mind. On the plus, this means that there are quite a few unexploited opportunities.
      • cratermoon 4y ago
        > Tech is mostly designed by young white English-speaking males Indeed, and readability is one of the less pressing problems that result from that. It's also why I have marginal hope, at best.
• mabbo 4y ago
  I feel as though there should be a standard set of tests that any or all fonts run through to demonstrate the various properties they want to claim. Don't tell me "better", tell me "Scored an 8.6 on legibility in the standard font assessment test".
  • leephillips 4y ago
    That would be valuable in comparing and searching for fonts. But some of these criteria are aesthetic.
  • riedel 4y ago
    Why do content creators need to do this? Particularly if they are experts and live off the trust in their experience. I am very happy if someone publishes something and states there goals an claims, so someone else can verify them independently. If it is not working they would risk reputation. If a few publisher's really check accessibility against relevant end users and verify that this works it is much better, than any kind of scores that often overlook important usability/accessibility issues. a11y Checkers are OK like any linter but I think we should not overdo this. That something has a higher score does not translate to better overall a11y.
  • CodeWriter23 4y ago
    It's from The Braille Institute. They ARE the standard when it comes to dealing with vision challenges / vision loss.
    • userbinator 4y ago
      Ironically those who need Braille are also unlikely to care how readable a font is.
      • samatman 4y ago
        The Institute is named after the same person as the writing system for the blind, rather than being named after that writing system.
      • 4y ago
• Sunspark 4y ago
  Reminder that fonts are subjective. This one is good for specific people, not everyone. I can't use it because I find it overly rounded with tics. An example of a font that is also meant to be legible, but is on the squarish side, is Tiresias Screenfont. Increased legibility does NOT mean "flow". Just because each character is more "distinct" does not mean that the whole word is able to be processed with ease. Important to evaluate them in body text. Also, one's cultural background absolutely affects which fonts are preferred. If you grew up with German blackletter writing, you're not necessarily going to like or appreciate a sans-serif font. In Germany's case, the change from blackletter to latin shapes happened fairly recently (WW2). It's happening now again, Kazakhstan has decided to stop using cyrillic and change to latin characters.
  • KronisLV 4y ago
    > An example of a font that is also meant to be legible, but is on the squarish side, is Tiresias Screenfont. Here's a quick example that a DuckDuckGo search turned up: https://catalog.monotype.com/font/bitstream/tiresias/screenfont https://catalog.monotype.com/font/bitstream/tiresias/screenf... Personally, I rather liked the Atkinson Hyperlegible as well, though I found the "bgrpq" characters too similar in shape regardless, but maybe that's a criticism of the alphabet itself. Regardless, a lot of the time I find myself using whatever is popular (e.g. Open Sans for web development) or something like Liberation Mono for writing code (though the rest of the Liberation fonts are great alternatives to Microsoft fonts, for example, when using LibreOffice). Open Sans: https://www.opensans.com/ https://www.opensans.com/ Liberation fonts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts
  • jackblemming 4y ago
    >Reminder that fonts are subjective. Yes but you can survey a fraction of a population and make strong statistical claims such as, “most people found so and so font more readable”.
    • Sunspark 4y ago
      Which population though? There are differences in age groups. People who grew up only with print won't lean toward a sans. People who grew up only with screens will lean toward sans, etc. If you go with that metric of doing a survey, then the answer is Times New Roman and Arial, not because they are superior (though they have excellent hinting) but due to long-term familiarity and exposure. I don't have a problem with providing what people are comfortable with, but comfort does not necessarily translate to better. It's subjective. Companies commissioning their own fonts, is not due to a desire to get improved quality, but simply to not have to pay a licensing fee for usage.
• micheljansen 4y ago
  Note: the page itself is set in Atkinson, which looks more than good enough to stand on its own, even if you would not be aware of its hyperlegible properties.
• Kaibeezy 4y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26011945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26011945
• mikotodomo 4y ago
  Wow, this is extremely well-designed and legible. Almost perfect, but I found one small issue in only one example on the screen. I read "B8 1Iil" as "B8 1TiL".
• asah 4y ago
  Curious: was this tested on users with various kinds of vision deficiencies? That study would be super interesting !
• h3mb3 4y ago
  The designer/YouTuber Linus Boman has a video [1] about this font and his involvement in the project, it's a pretty interesting watch IMO. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjE5eHLICzc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjE5eHLICzc
  • ainar-g 4y ago
    Linus' channel is severely underappreciated. I especially enjoyed his dive into the typography of comedy club logos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPmlv7cDk6Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPmlv7cDk6Q.
• schoen 4y ago
  How effective is the German FE-Schrift license plate typeface for this purpose? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FE-Schrift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FE-Schrift It was designed to make different characters visually distinct from one another, but also especially difficult to alter into something visually similar. The latter part is a slightly different goal.
  • TakeBlaster16 4y ago
    Maybe it would work, but I can't see myself ever using a font without lowercase letters.
• supernova87a 4y ago
  Interesting that the slash on the zero character goes in the opposite slant direction than you normally see? Also, in the middle of that webpage, they show how the shapes in "ER79jr" are slightly different from conventional (they didn't notate it but I assume the yellow background alternate shapes are what are usually seen), but could have used some better explanation why those alternate shapes are confusing.
  • an_ko 4y ago
    I imagine the "backslash" in the zero is intended to make it more distinct from Ø and ø.
  • pengstrom 4y ago
    I assume this is to differentiate with 'Ø'
    • silvestrov 4y ago
      As an "Ø" language user, the 0-with-backslash is very wrong, it makes my brain say "syntax error". It does definitely not help reading speed. It would be much better using a 0-with-dot. Feels odd to use such a weird variation when there is AFAIK only a single language using Ø and we never have problem with 0 being mistaken for Ø.
• GuB-42 4y ago
  With a few tweaks (monospaced variant), it could make a great coding font. Coding fonts have essentially the same goal: make similar looking characters different: 1liI|, 0O, etc... Code naturally strains our visual acuity: we want to see as much as possible, it means that we may use a smaller font size than we would find comfortable reading text with. Single letter, punctuation, etc... can be really important, in regular text, you can understand even if you can't read all the characters. So a hyperlegible font can help coders, even those with good vision, and many coding fonts already have "hyperlegible" features.
  • userbinator 4y ago
    Indeed, that's what I thought too when I read about the letter distinction. The reverse slash on the 0 seems a little odd, but otherwise this looks like a proportional version of Consolas.
  • pen2l 4y ago
    Pardon me, where do I find the monospace variant?
    • mtrpcic 4y ago
      What OP was saying was a few tweaks could make a monospace variant, which would be a nice programming font. I don't think a monospace variant is available right now.
      • pen2l 4y ago
        Ah yes, sorry. I think MonaLisa actually fits the bill: https://www.monolisa.dev/ https://www.monolisa.dev/
        • fercircularbuf 4y ago
          For the life of me I just can't get over how different the g is from the rest of the letters. I find it incredibly distracting, so I can't use this font.
• dang 4y ago
  Related: Atkinson Hyperlegible – a font by the Braille Institute designed for legibility - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28010540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28010540 - July 2021 (1 comment) Atkinson Hyperlegible Font - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26011945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26011945 - Feb 2021 (86 comments) Atkinson Hyperlegible Font - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25154417 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25154417 - Nov 2020 (10 comments) Atkinson Hyperlegible Font - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24853550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24853550 - Oct 2020 (3 comments) A Free Hyperlegible Typeface from the Braille Institute - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24791358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24791358 - Oct 2020 (4 comments)
• ComputerGuru 4y ago
  The link is down for me. Here is a cached copy so you can at least see what all the hype is about: https://archive.ph/ok1ro https://archive.ph/ok1ro
• cratermoon 4y ago
  Just FYI, I downloaded the font (after some time) and put it on my Kobo. When I tried to use it my Kobo just rebooted. Bad news, everyone. But good news, everyone. It's available from Google at https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Atkinson+Hyperlegible https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Atkinson+Hyperlegible and this one works with my Kobo. I don't know why, I'm no font expert, but it does make for nice reading.
• beprogrammed 4y ago
  Really is quite a nice font
• sylware 4y ago
  "Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form." Any noscript/basic (x)html download link?
  • khobragade 4y ago
    Here it is https://brailleinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/atkinson-hyperlegible-font/Atkinson-Hyperlegible-Font-Print-and-Web-2020-0514.zip https://brailleinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/atkinson-hyp...
    • sylware 4y ago
      thx, did I miss the link?
• throwaway14356 4y ago
  I made a 3px height font by giving the letters a color but couldn't figure out if the experiment was a success or not. http://synesthesia.go-here.nl http://synesthesia.go-here.nl
• asiachick 4y ago
  > download and change the world vs > 335 glyphs per font Sounds like much of the world was left out. Note: I wouldn't have brought this up if it wasn't for the hyperbole of "change the world"
• gizmore 4y ago
  I am happy to announce; i wrote a GDOv7 module to ship this font and will use it in one of my projects. Of course, this projekt uses only Latin characters. (The fonts are like 20kb, i doubt they feature something asian.)
• pkphilip 4y ago
  Great idea! One comment though - on Firefox when I try downloading the font, it disallows the download stating that it is a security risk. That is because the font is being downloaded of a HTTP url rather than an HTTPS url. I had to manually turn off that restriction in the firefox download to get the font downloaded. May be a good idea to have the download initiated from a HTTPS url
• aasasd 4y ago
  I'm glad someone finally took a stab at ‘8’, ‘9’ and ‘6’—I regularly have to lean or whip out the screen magnifier in to tell which one it is.
• kapilkchaurasia 4y ago