@moonglow started a discussion about legible fonts. That prompted me to make these three tables of fonts.
Some of these fonts have a reputation for legibility. Others are just very common. The latter are so you can see how legible or not the popular fonts are.
I've included four columns of easily confused characters. I recommend using those columns as your primary criteria.
Edit: Added additional readable fonts.
#accessibility #legibility #font #fonts #typeface #typefaces
I updated the tables to include some more sans serif fonts that are sometimes recommended as readable. I also added the "hn" column.
The Sans Serif table has footnotes now. They're not clickable in the image, so I'm presenting them here.
1 Recommended by British Dyslexia Association
https://www.bumc.bu.edu/jmedday/files/2025/05/Dyslexia-Style-Guide-2023-BDA-Style-Guide-2023.pdf
2 Created by Braille Foundation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkinson_Hyperlegible
5 (Not shown, because it's $50!) Dyslexie
https://dyslexiefont.com/en/
@wmd @moonglow
That's not an intentional omission. This is just what I had on my system.
I figured that I would probably get a few suggestions after I posted this. I can add those. I'm not intending this to become comprehensive, though.
Feel free to recommend what I should add.
(Yes, opendyslexic seems to be the most popular and an obvious add.)
@ronnylam
Until yesterday, I was a fan of Verdana. It was designed to be legible at small point sizes. It's actually only marginally better than most of these.
Among the sans serifs, the one that appeals to me most right now is Ayuthaya. It looks very readable. I'm going to try that in my browser as the default.
Arial Rounded MT Bold is very pretty. Except for the rn problem, it seems quite readable.
My third choice would be Atkinson Hyperlegible.
@photorat ooh thank you for this and your response earlier! This is helpful!
I will make sure to include some of these were able
- 💙
@moonglow
Choose wisely.
Also, you don't want to give your readers too many choices. It tends to paralyze people. A few very good fonts that are significantly different from each other would probably be best.
Maybe Dyslexie, Atkinson Hyperlegible Next, and a couple of others. Try to get more people to weigh in.
@photorat I can't provide dyslexie as it isn't free. Opendyslexic I can provide
As for too many choices. I don't know. I do know that we ourselves as disabled people prefer more options as opposed to too little
For what its worth this is a personal for fun site and not anything *serious*. I kind of doubt we'll get too many visitors to begin with. Its a hobby project. Maybe I can provide a few options, and provide a link to a page with more choices if wanted
- 💙
@photorat I'm unfortunately going to have to optionally include some javascript to save the settings because otherwise you have to re-set the settings every page. There's no other way to do this sadly
I hope thats not too much of a problem. I do have many friends who disable javascript
@moonglow
I have no idea about the javascript problem. Maybe there are some clever people who can figure it out.
Maybe the way to "solve" it is to figure out if there is a font that works well enough for >50% of your readers. Use that as the website font. Then the only people who have to turn on javascript are the ones who can't use your default font.
Photorat
🌈☔🌦️🍄🌱🍉
Ronny Lam
Moonglow Constellation
gmc