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skze

@n8 @Tusky a lot of dysexic as well as non-dyslexic people who have other vision and processing difficulties (hi) depend on these types of fonts. if your "research data" takes away a crucial accessibility tool that a whole lot of people rely on, then that's just ableism. medical research disputing and contradicting disabled community knowledge and our lived experience is nothing new. it is ableism. disabled people have expertise over our own experience. you can discount that as "anecdotes", or you can accept the fact that these "anecdotes" are the truth of our lives. use your precious data to add MORE accessibility tools, yes please. but if you use it to take AWAY accessibility tools, you're just being an asshole

19 Jul 2023 at 18:46 | Wall-to-wall | Open on toot.cat
14 comments
sour patch dyke ๐Ÿงก๐Ÿ’šโค๏ธ๐Ÿ’›๐Ÿ’™

@skye @n8 wow this guy is a piece of work

making tools available isn't "misinformation" you ridiculous walnut head, and using verbose academicized phrasing and too many semicolons doesn't make you right

19 Jul 2023 at 18:52 | Open on cathode.church
DELETED

@x4nw @skye @n8 apart from everything else, what a lot of people miss is that choosing the optimal font for whatever purpose is only important when authoring a document

but it's largely irrelevant when you're writing an app, where you can just include several and let people choose

19 Jul 2023 at 18:57 | Open on kozterulethasznalatienge.day
skze

@almostconverge @x4nw @n8 exactly!!! and actually only relevant when authoring a PRINT document. everything that's digital can just have custom font settings.

and like i love that people always go "it's not better for people with dyslexia" as if that means "they are imagining their access needs" and not "so dyslexia is clearly not the reason for this effect"

19 Jul 2023 at 19:03 | Open on toot.cat
Faith has purple hair! :v_tg: :v_lb:

@skye Wow! What a pile of abelist garbage!

If there's one thing we know about any sort of neurodivergence, of which dyslexia is a form, it's that it's extremely individual. What helps one person may not help another.

Every single one of the articles I could find cited through those links (of which there weren't many) were from the perspective of typographers trying to make print resources more accessible. If you're going to print a book, you need to find one typeface that works well for everyone. You're not going to have 5 different versions in the bookstore for different types of readers. They were looking for a universal solution which doesn't exist. That doesn't mean that local solutions don't exist or that Open Dyslexic isn't one such local solution. There was also some cautioning against going "OMG Fonts!" when other factors such as spacing matter as well.

The main argument against Google fonts was that throwing them at kids to try and fix dyslexia was not a great plan and may do more harm than good. The danger in schools isn't that OpenDyslexic is harmful for the student but that ignorant parents and teachers will treat it as a silver bullet or, worse, use it as a diagnostic too. "Switching their font didn't help, so not dyslexic!" That's bad. IDK that Google disallowing the font is an actual solution to that problem or that Google Fonts maintainers should be in the position of making educational decisions, though.

But also, we're not talking about kids here. We're talking about adults who are capable of making their own decisions. Totally different ballgame.

Even within that context and giving them the most academic benefit of the doubt that I can, the whole thing is dripping with abelism. Lots of probably non-dyslexic white guys sitting around saying "Well, I don't think this will actually help, so no."

So, yeah, total abelist trash.

@Tusky, please keep those options if people are using them. I'm not, personally, but my dyslexia isn't as severe as some and is usually okay with short lines like the kind you get on a phone screen. I know of others, however, who absolutely depend on that font.

@n8

@skye Wow! What a pile of abelist garbage!

If there's one thing we know about any sort of neurodivergence, of which dyslexia is a form, it's that it's extremely individual. What helps one person may not help another.

Every single one of the articles I could find cited through those links (of which there weren't many) were from the perspective of typographers trying to make print resources more accessible. If you're going to print a book, you need to find one typeface that works well for everyone....

19 Jul 2023 at 19:13 | Open on anarres.family
legumancer Davy

@faithisleaping needing short lines is a sign of dyslexia?! (Line length makes a huge difference in text being readable for me but I hadn't thought much about why.)

19 Jul 2023 at 20:57 | Open on tech.lgbt
Faith has purple hair! :v_tg: :v_lb:

@legumancer I don't know what it is that makes the difference. Short lines? Short paragraphs? Typeface? All I know is that I typically have less trouble reading on my phone than in print or on my desktop.

19 Jul 2023 at 21:00 | Open on anarres.family
yes, it's me, liza ๐Ÿ‡ต๐Ÿ‡ท ๐Ÿฆ› ๐Ÿฆฆ

@skye @n8 @Tusky am rabidly dyslexic and a web developer. that font is trash; but that's me. the ability to change size, color, width and density of fonts is what's not only important, but gives people like me a better array of accessibility options. i have the kind of dysgraphia where i see shapes but can't read the words. especially with black backgrounds --whole paragraphs disappear. jeffrey zeldman's web standards book really helped me create my own accessibility styleguide

19 Jul 2023 at 19:49 | Open on mastodon.social
skze

@blogdiva @n8 @Tusky yeah, i am aware that it's not a great font for many people, but a crucial tool for others. isn't that the point of accessibility, to provide options for everyone so that we all get what we need? ๐Ÿ˜Œ

personally i strongly suspect that "dyslexia" is not the correct framework for these highly irregular fonts. many dyslexics hate them. and many non-dyslexics (like me) absolutely depend on them.

and yea as we all know, the numbers don't show a measurable improvement *for people with dyslexia*. so that is almost definitely not the reason why they are necessary for some, but doesn't change the fact that they are.

i just find it really hurtful when people like that guy dismiss real access needs as "anecdotes". that's not an anecdote, that is my life, and i struggle so much with digital access precisely because of the font issue, it eats so much of my time and energy. i'm glad that it's starting to appear on the general accessibility radar, and i hope we can normalise the ability to *choose*. not between 5 highly regular sans serif fonts witn slightly different shapes, like some apps offer, but real customisation ๐Ÿฅฐ

@blogdiva @n8 @Tusky yeah, i am aware that it's not a great font for many people, but a crucial tool for others. isn't that the point of accessibility, to provide options for everyone so that we all get what we need? ๐Ÿ˜Œ

personally i strongly suspect that "dyslexia" is not the correct framework for these highly irregular fonts. many dyslexics hate them. and many non-dyslexics (like me) absolutely depend on them.

19 Jul 2023 at 20:00 | Open on toot.cat
yes, it's me, liza ๐Ÿ‡ต๐Ÿ‡ท ๐Ÿฆ› ๐Ÿฆฆ

@skye @n8 @Tusky agreed that customization is the key to accessibility. that other person was technically not wrong; but if Tusky is gonna add it; they should consider including actually useful variable fonts

developer.mozilla.org/en-US/do

which, again, gives the user a greater array of accessibility options the devs won't necessarily have to hard code

am as anti-Google as they come but FONTS it's the only thing they got right in the last 10 years. Noto, Droid & Roboto cover a lot of smartphones

@skye @n8 @Tusky agreed that customization is the key to accessibility. that other person was technically not wrong; but if Tusky is gonna add it; they should consider including actually useful variable fonts

developer.mozilla.org/en-US/do

which, again, gives the user a greater array of accessibility options the devs won't necessarily have to hard code

19 Jul 2023 at 20:16 | Open on mastodon.social
skze

@blogdiva @n8 @Tusky yeah it sounds like a useful addition! though for me neither of those 3 includes anything i can read, they are too regular. so they certainly do not cover the full range of accessibility needs.

i had to actually spend money in that samsung store thing to get fonts on my phone and tablet that i can read, since they removed the chocolate cookie font that they used to come with ๐Ÿ˜ž

19 Jul 2023 at 20:26 | Open on toot.cat
yes, it's me, liza ๐Ÿ‡ต๐Ÿ‡ท ๐Ÿฆ› ๐Ÿฆฆ

@skye @n8 @Tusky am so mad about Samsung i can't even express my disgust and disappointment. i used to be able to root their phones and do all the UI/UX stuff i needed. Trump came and they obvs got paid off to backdoor phones in the US & Canada because it's impossible to do so anymore if you buy your phones here.

but i have a whole list of lo-fi hacks to makes those changes w/o having Samsung fuck with your UI. i gotta get my blog finally up to share that.

19 Jul 2023 at 20:45 | Open on mastodon.social
skze

@blogdiva yeah i'm definitely not getting another one of those. the devices i have are gonna last a few more years but when they need replacing i am going to go with something that has free software on it, i am really done with this BS

19 Jul 2023 at 20:58 | Open on toot.cat
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