Hyperlegible: an approach to accessible type design

This is amazing work. Fonts like this help even the people without vision impairment. For example Lexend font was so useful to me after I discovered that it helps me to read so much faster.

verdadero mucho gracias

Even for making tags and signs for stuff in a workplace, especially in like a factory for example where communication is vital, replacing Arial with this font is an incredible idea. Even if it's just for the fact it handles homoglyphs and looks neutral like Helvetica. Too I know in my factory we have a lot of older folks with vision difficulties, so they would definitely appreciate it.

Just changed to Atkinson

A really interesting video.
I had just come across Lexend, and wondered how Atkinson Hyperlegible compared in terms of readability. As far as I am aware, these fonts were created for legibility, but not necessarily related to vision loss.

I'm a teacher and I've been using this font in all the material I make for my students and some of them have asked me about the font, because it's easier on their eyes as they say, so you and the entire team should be really proud of what you've accomplished 👏

Amazing.

Could the '6' be a bit more open at the top?

I love font analysis videos like this. awesome job!!

Inspiring work, thank you for sharing!

My private practice Family/Pediatric clinic uses this font on our property and in our app. Speaking of legibility i im worming on my signature when i sign prescriptions lol

Thank you so much for your work on this video and on this font. I am a video producer for a non-profit. We burn in captions many of our videos into Korean, Chinese, and Arabic. I'd love to start using Atkinson Hyperlegible for our english captions. This video got me thinking about which fonts we use for captions and if they are designed with legibility in mind. Do you have any suggestions on how to find some well designed fonts in these languages? Thanks!

If only my optometrist would use this font for my eye tests! I could imagine my sight was really not so bad after all...

Accessible fonts are something extremely important and I'm glad it's something that is at least being considered. I need glasses and there are very few fonts that I can read at normal distances without them, so it's very important that we spread accessible fonts far and wide for both those with correctable issues with their eyes and those with greater vision difficulties. Something that also needs to be considered is UI scaling and contrast improvements. Even with glasses I just absolutely struggle to read pages that don't scale well or that have low contrast. I cannot read pages in "dark mode" at all because they usually use a light gray on dark gray color scheme, something that I cannot read. As a result, I use browser zoom features, reader modes, and other extensions to let me actually use the internet successfully. The problem is that some websites block or ban the extensions and features that I use because they sometimes don't show advertisements or change the content on a page. It's insane that there are websites that block these features, because they are just as (if not more than) important as font choice.

This font reminds me of Lexend and its goals but they go about it in different ways

I have dyslexia, and I have found that this font also helps with that for me! I'm using it as my override font on my internet browser, and as the system font on my phone, and it really makes reading a bit easier.

What a fantastic video! I graduated graphic design and had always dreamed to work in type design, though somehow ended up falling in love with medicine and ended up in med school after some trials with my own health. Regardless, type design still holds a very special place in my heart – something nearly impossible to explain to fellow med students, especially in Brazil where typography is often undervalued even by graphic designers.

This feels like a marriage of lots of themes that have been very important to me: disability, accessibility, typography… Lovely!

Edit: on a side-note, one of my closest friends in design school had dyslexia and always reminded us how differentiation between different letters helped her. I remember her finding Futura a nightmare hahah

Love this font and how it doesn’t sacrifice aesthetics for accessibility. I honestly wish more distinction was made between lowercase b d p q, which are some of the primary letters that can help confuse people with dyslexia. The tail on the lowercase q is great, and I’d love to see other ways to make those glyphs more distinct from just being rotated.

Hey Linus,
I dont know if you read comments on old videos, but I feel like I need to tell you about the impact this video had on me.
I am quite fond of accessible design due to a multitude of reasons. I was watching your videos before this one came out and still remember installing and using it for documents of my local club.
I since have written my bachelor thesis on the subject of accessibility, especially for government communication. The topic was to a large part inspired by this video and it enabled me to take an educated look at the document as a whole. Not only the building and facilities need to be accessible, but also the content and design of our communication, including the font. I have since received my degree and will start working at the councils office where I have written my thesis.
I am still hopeful that I can integrate accessible design in our workflow. Maybe we'll have a process that is way more accessible soon.
I love you and your videos, they have tought me a lot and they reinvigoured my interest in typography and logo design.
As some other commentator put it: You really are criminally underrated!

Very well done, this will help people

This might be a great font for dyslexic readers.

Oh, this sounds like a wonderful option! Thank you for telling us, I didin't know about this font! One of my best friends has dyslexia, a lot of fonts make her life very difficult. While she has mostly given up, I am always on the hunt for higly legible fonts to use on cards and e-mails to her (and others). Thank you for the video! Now I know of a great new option, and it looks good too! (Comic Sans is another good option, but... well, Comic Sans. Writing to my friend about my elderly grand aunt and how her dementia is progressing in Comic Sans just feels... wrong)

Really glad I found this video! Going to start using it, as my content is about accessibility, so it fits in to the whole thing <3
Are you ok if I refrence your vid in a TikTok? :)

im a graphic design student, i just wish there were more widths so i can use it in more versatile ways

I have Lebers Hereditary Optic Neuropathy; Bad eyesight. But not the blurry kind. At the beginning of this video when the focus was on the blurry problems I did not see big advantages. but then the "gaps" in sight and problems with central vision and such came into play and yep; That's how I see.

I know a good font with bold easy to read forms and good differentiation. comic sans :)

My experience with mathematics and physics has taught me to really appreciate letter/number/symbol forms with clearly distinguishable homoglyphs, so much so that my handwriting actually changed to make homoglyphs more visually distinct (at least when writing mathematical expressions). This wasn't limited to the Roman/English alphabet, as Greek letters are also frequently used in in maths and physics, so you also have homoglyph pairs like 'v' and 'ν' (lowercase nu) to contend with as well.

I and l (one is an i and the other is L) look the same, and rn (RN) and m (M) are pretty close too

Nice start, eagerly awaiting this supporting more languages.

Wow. That's a gorgeous font. I can see it being this generation's Helvetica for sure. It's somehow more welcoming and fun than any other neo-grotesk

I think this font has that super neat handwriting look to it, it's seriously making me consider switching from my main font of helvetica. You know the type of handwriting I'm talking about, the type you see in all those handwriting videos or the kind that the one girl in class busts out and proclaims "my handwriting is so bad"

Hyperlegible is like the visual version of the NATO Phonetic Alphabet; everything chosen to account for potential losses of signal.
"...pha... rav... ar... elt... cho... ox... olf... tel... in... uli... im... mi... emb... sca... ap... bec... meo... ier... go... nif... ict... isk... ray... yan... lu..."

I’ve been using this font as my default for about a year now, and I love it. I have no visual impairments, but even for sighted people it’s just so easy to skim. It’s completely changed my standards for fonts. Why would I go back to a font where I can’t tell the difference between a capital i and a lowercase L?

Do you have a good set to pair with? A recommended mono and serif font?

That's a good looking font, and incredibly practical for as many people as possible. Definitely implementing this in future projects

Cool video!
Glad this got recommended to me.

I'm currently working on a website to host online interactive courses, I will look into using this font to improve accessibility.

in some ways, legibility helps the aesthetic. if i look at the text even without reading, it looks a lot more like text than a bunch of lines

Interestingly enough, I checked it out, and prefer Atkinson Hyperlegible. It's not that much ahead, not revolutionary, but for sans serif fonts as things go, A.L. is my go-to, barely ahead of Helvetica, and then Helvetica ahead of Arial (lower case t on Arial bugs me for some reason). I wish the capital R's arm was as a more stacked, vertical design like Helvetica, but it could be misconstrued as an 8 or a B, and so...yeah, my nitpick is invalid compared to the intent of the font.

I wanna use this, but usually have to use Times New Roman for class. Are there any good hyper legible Times New Roman clones with the same spacing and close appearance?

I use a comic sans based font for programming because I find it more legible. And because I think it's funny. Shoutout to Fantasque Sans Mono.

This has been my favorite font for a while now. I am nearsighted with astigmatism and my vision is very blurry on dark theme sites/apps etc. I can't read high contrast dark theme at all. Sometimes I will write a userstyle to change the colors but sometimes this is not really feasible due to how the page's code is structured. So my solution to legibility for my own use is one userstyle that just blanket changes everything into Atkinson Hyperlegible. It's not perfect because my vision issues are often due to color and size, but it genuinely does help me a great deal in everyday life. I can't live without it.

So basically it had the same design goals as Verdana, uses many similar techniques and also looks horrible.

Amazing breakthrough! I've now adopted this typeface for all my training work and email. And I've become keen to promote its use to others - thank you!

Might change out the font in my stylesheets for this.

Really wish Canva had this. Many asked for it over the past year, but nothing from them.

24 years ago, I visited a Frutiger exhibition, which was a mixture of his graphics and typography works. And I purchased a little booklet about the history and creation of his font Frutiger. One of the figures that fascinated me the most was his way of testing legibility on paper. Back in the day, there was no easy way to apply a blur filter, like we can do so quickly today. So instead he used hatching to achieve a similar effect. Very "graphic designer". This image is so burnt into my mind and always comes up whenever accessibility pops up as a subject.

Adrian is simply one of my design heroes and I was so happy to see him and his work mentioned here again.

And maybe I am too old but I don't associate OCR fonts with sci-fi. To me they are synonymous with machine readable checks :) which now feels so far far back in time.