There is a need to improve the legibility of written information. This is particularly so for low readers but also for frequent use, and finally for everybody that need a legible interface.
It may be for persons with visual impairment, (blind users, low vision user, cataract), for low literate user, for learning reader, hard of hearing user using efficient subtitling, and all user facing reading difficulties (as dyslexia), or due to contextual constraints (as outdoor use of a mobile phone, or car driving interface).
Accessible-DfA font has been designed to provide maximum legibility for everybody. It answers to following constraints:
- Legibility: in order to be legible, a text need to be high contrasted, with low fantasy, large shapes, sufficient spacing between characters.
- Differentiation: perceiving things is a complex cognitive process, and to have sufficient cues to detect letters and characters is sometimes not enough in the reading process. Accessible-DfA font is optimized regarding mix-up that may occur on similar glyphs. “lIi1”, “aoe”, “uvw”, “CO0”, “XK”, “hnm”, “71”, “CE/Œ”…
- Anti-reversed: sometimes user switches letters, and reverses them in mind. We minimized this with some weighted on the baseline: “E3”, “B8”, “69”, “ft”, “nu”, “qpdb”, “CU”, “( )”, …
- Punctuation and accentuation: those are main component of European languages and need to be reinforced. Large dot and strokes and readable accents, even on capitals, are the points: « . ! ¡ ’ < ? ¿ É À Â ô Ô û Ù ï Ï ỏí ç Ḑ [ ] () {} ŗĻ Ã ą ọǚǒØ …
Accessible-DfA font has been designed under the direction of Denis Chêne at the Orange labs research unit in Grenoble, France.
Accessible-DfA font is an Opentype font usable on any Opertating System. It is also available as woff font (web format).
Accessible-DfA font is free to download, subject to the licence agreement.
Click on the link “AccessibleDfA.ttf” or “AccessibleDfA.otf” at the top of this page, download the file on your desktop. Go there, and right click again on the saved file, a contextual menu is opened, then choose “install”. Now the font is visible from any editors (word, writer, notepad…).
- In Nautilus, go to your user root (
~) and display all hidden files and folders - find a folder named
.fonts— if it does not exist, create it - drag the “AccessibleDfA.otf” font file into the folder
- if needed, restart your word processor to see the Accessible DfA font in your font list
Denis CHÊNE, denis.chene@orange.com
Copyright (C) 2015 Orange
SIL OPEN FONT LICENSE (OFL-1.1): http://opensource.org/licenses/OFL-1.1
