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GeneralRe: New font mandate creates frenzy at State department Pin
trønderen20-Jan-23 6:08
trønderen20-Jan-23 6:08 
GeneralRe: New font mandate creates frenzy at State department Pin
obermd20-Jan-23 8:30
obermd20-Jan-23 8:30 
GeneralRe: New font mandate creates frenzy at State department Pin
trønderen20-Jan-23 14:41
trønderen20-Jan-23 14:41 
GeneralRe: New font mandate creates frenzy at State department Pin
Kent Sharkey19-Jan-23 11:05
staffKent Sharkey19-Jan-23 11:05 
GeneralRe: New font mandate creates frenzy at State department Pin
Matthew Dennis19-Jan-23 10:14
sysadminMatthew Dennis19-Jan-23 10:14 
GeneralRe: New font mandate creates frenzy at State department Pin
kalberts19-Jan-23 10:38
kalberts19-Jan-23 10:38 
GeneralRe: New font mandate creates frenzy at State department Pin
Daniel Pfeffer19-Jan-23 11:05
professionalDaniel Pfeffer19-Jan-23 11:05 
GeneralRe: New font mandate creates frenzy at State department Pin
kalberts20-Jan-23 7:21
kalberts20-Jan-23 7:21 
Possibly, but my impression is that the scientists think dyslexia can have a great variety of causes.

My first thought here: If one of the causes is purely visual, call it 'optical', related to the photographic image your eye lens forms on your retina (so the typeface comes into play), then I would expect this to affect other images as well. The dyslectic would not as quickly pick up identifying details in other images or drawings, e.g. to identify the type of sailing ship or dog breed. It sounds improbable that the brain should have no problems visually identifying all other kinds of shapes and forms, but incapable of processing letter shapes properly. I consider it much more likely that it is related to the shapes being letters; they are expected to have 'letter semantics'. It still has to do with associating the letter image with letter semantics, but it would largely apply to any a-shape, b-shape or c-shape.

I am not completely rejecting that typeface may have an influence, but I would certainly like to see independent studies before making a conclusion. My guess is that e.g. serif/sans-serif can be essential, as well as how the dyslectic has learned to read - character by character, or word by word.

In my childhood, there was at least one pupil in each class plauged by stuttering. A fair share of people argued that this was caused by physical defects. However, their stuttering was cured through therapy, no operation. I haven't seen any kuid plagued by stuttering for many, many years. Appearently, we are no longer creating the mental conditions causing the mental blocks inhibiting their speech.

On the other hand: An incrasing number of kids raise similar blocks if you give them even a very simple math problem to solve: When seing numbers, they immediately block out all logical reasoning and strategic thinking, completely unable to know where to start to attack the problem. Dyscalculi is definitely on the rise - certainly here in Norway, but I think in some other countries as well.

I've seen very similar reactions when trying to teach kids elementary sheet music reading: Some kids panic immediately, cannot fixate on the sheet, if you ask them whether they think a sequence of notes go up or down in pitch, they have no idea ... What kind of dys-xxx is that? Dys-musicality? The majority of kids have no problems. Some of the kids terrified by sheet music can play or sing in perfect pitch, as long as there is not a music sheet in sight ...

Even hysteria (Wikipedia: Female hysteria[^]) wore off as the psychiological conditions for provoking it gradually faded away. Like with the stuttering. I am no saying that neither hysteria, stuttering nor dyslexia is 'self induced'. Some people obviously will trigger far more easily than others on certain conditions. Therapy must aim to reduce that hyper-sensitivity, to teach the patient to 'control the panic'. Psychology, mostly. Of course, in some cases you can reduce or remove the triggers, but that is the exceptional case. Finding a typeface that is more readable to some dyslectics (I strongly doubt that it will help all of them) is of use only for text specially prepared for dyslectics - hoping to make it the standard or only typeface on every web page on the internet, every printed newspaper or book ... We all know that it will never happen. I doubt that the typeface will be seen anywhere but in articles claiming that would be an improvement for dyslectics.
GeneralRe: New font mandate creates frenzy at State department Pin
Marc Clifton20-Jan-23 13:16
mvaMarc Clifton20-Jan-23 13:16 
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Kent Sharkey18-Jan-23 11:16
staffKent Sharkey18-Jan-23 11:16 
GeneralRe: Office Insider program gets a name change Pin
David O'Neil18-Jan-23 12:56
professionalDavid O'Neil18-Jan-23 12:56 
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staffKent Sharkey18-Jan-23 9:01 
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Kent Sharkey18-Jan-23 7:46
staffKent Sharkey18-Jan-23 7:46 
GeneralRe: Announcing .NET Community Toolkit 8.1! Better, faster MVVM source generators, .NET 7 support, and more! Pin
Nelek18-Jan-23 9:40
protectorNelek18-Jan-23 9:40 
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Kent Sharkey18-Jan-23 7:46
staffKent Sharkey18-Jan-23 7:46 
GeneralRe: Visual Studio 2022 17.5 Preview 3 is here! Pin
Tasadit18-Jan-23 21:35
Tasadit18-Jan-23 21:35 
GeneralRe: Visual Studio 2022 17.5 Preview 3 is here! Pin
Richard Deeming18-Jan-23 23:24
mveRichard Deeming18-Jan-23 23:24 
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Kent Sharkey18-Jan-23 7:01
staffKent Sharkey18-Jan-23 7:01 
GeneralRe: Scientists are getting eerily good at using WiFi to 'see' people through walls in detail Pin
Nelek18-Jan-23 9:37
protectorNelek18-Jan-23 9:37 
GeneralRe: Scientists are getting eerily good at using WiFi to 'see' people through walls in detail Pin
Dan Neely19-Jan-23 3:31
Dan Neely19-Jan-23 3:31 
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staffKent Sharkey18-Jan-23 7:01 
GeneralRe: Deconstruction in C# Pin
Nelek18-Jan-23 9:36
protectorNelek18-Jan-23 9:36 
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Kent Sharkey18-Jan-23 7:01
staffKent Sharkey18-Jan-23 7:01 
GeneralRe: Spotify, Basecamp, and Deezer ask European regulators to crack down on Apple Pin
Nelek18-Jan-23 9:33
protectorNelek18-Jan-23 9:33 
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staffKent Sharkey18-Jan-23 6:46 

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