Christian Boer always struggled with reading. When confronted with a page of text, the letters would twist and jumble together into an incomprehensibl

The typeface that helps dyslexics read - BBC Future

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2021-07-04 18:30:09

Christian Boer always struggled with reading. When confronted with a page of text, the letters would twist and jumble together into an incomprehensible mess.

It was not until his mother overheard a conversation her husband was having with another teacher about dyslexia that she realised why her son might be having so much trouble.

“In class I would think of excuses about why I was struggling – I was tired or it just wasn’t my day,” says Boer. “But when everyone else would be finished and I had only made my way through half a page, I began to doubt myself. You start to think, ‘am I stupid?’

Boer was six when he was diagnosed with dyslexia. Despite the extra help he received at school, he still struggled with long pages of typed text. Years later, while studying art at HKU University of the Arts in Utrecht, Holland, he decided to do something about his problem: he designed his own typeface.

Christian Boer tweaked similar looking letters like "b" and "d" so they could not be easily confused (Credit: Christian Boer)