OpenDyslexic, a free-to-use font created by Abelardo Gonzalez, aims to help people with dyslexia read online content easier.
The open-sourced font features heavily-weighted bottoms to help give letters "gravity," thus curbing the brain's ability to rotate characters and make them look like other letters, explains the OpenDyslexic Web site.
The BBC reports that a recent update to Instapaper, an app that allows users save Web pages to read later, included OpenDyslexic as a font option. It has also appeared in word processors, e-readers and been installed on school computers.
Gonzalez, who released his designs in 2011, said he started to project in order to give people with developmental reading disorder a free alternative.
There are other, similar fonts being sold that are geared towards people with dyslexia. In 2010 "Dyslexie," a font developed by Dutch designer Christian Boer, was shown to increase reading accuracy (though not speed) in people with dyslexia in a master's thesis study at the University of Twente, according to the Boston Globe.
OpenDyslexic works on the same principle as Dyslexie, except that it is free and open-source. Personal use copies of the latter reportedly cost around $90, while copies for school use may cost significantly more.
Approximately 5 to 15 percent of Americans are thought to have dyslexia, according to the Dyslexia Research Institute.
Check out the new font (below).
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