The invisible technology of the world: design and development of a dyslexic-oriented font

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Cover illustration by Marco D'Ambrosio
PDF (Italian)
Published: Jul 9, 2015
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17471/2499-4324/265
Keywords:
Dyslexia, Reading, Writing, Font, Didactics, SLD, Invisible Technology, Educational Technology, Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL)

Main Article Content

Stefano Di Tore
Università degli Studi di Salerno, Fisciano, Salerno
Maurizio Sibilio
Università degli Studi di Salerno, Fisciano, Salerno

Abstract

The relationship between written text and the spatial dimension is so evident and obvious as to become practically transparent, invisible. Assuming Ong’s definition of writing as a technology of the word, written text is certainly classifiable among the “invisible technologies”. The work presented here is based on the consideration that not all technologies are transparent in the same way for everyone. For example, the process of reading and writing continues to present degrees of opacity that can have a dramatic impact in the case of specific learning disabilities. This paper discusses the choices made in the design of a font called D-FONT, which is geared towards making reading easier for dyslexic subjects. It also reports the results of a pilot study carried out to verify the font’s effectiveness for this purpose. At its present stage of development, D-FONT consists of 102 glyphs, including upper and lowercase letters, numbers, accents, symbols and punctuation.

Article Details

Issue
Vol. 23 No. 1 (2015): TD64 - Invisible technology
Section
Articles - Special Issue

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