Dyslexia is a condition where nearly ten percent of the world’s population is estimated to suffer from reading disorder, which, in numerical terms will be about 800,000,000 persons. They are dubbed as lazy people and slow learners. It is a general feeling that dyslexia is confined to seeing letters (alphabets) in reverse or in an upside down form or hazy vision that hampers reading ability.
For the first time, a U.K. designer Daniel Britton, himself a person with dyslexia has shown to the world the real difficulties faced by sufferers like him to read and write. He says that he is able to see letters in legible form but the part of the brain that is responsible for decoding the information is slow making him take longer time to read and write.
He has devised a novel way to make people understand empathise with dyslexics by making them slow down to the speed of a dyslexic in reading and writing. He has created a font by erasing 40% of the lines from well known typeface Helvetica which though legible forces people to take longer to read the words. Now, he says triumphantly that he had achieved his mission of making people understand the real pain suffered by persons with dyslexia.
He was diagnosed with dyslexia during his final year of university and many of his friends and professors thought that he was slow or stupid. The typeface slows down the reading speed and makes non-dyslexic people to understand the frustration and embarrassment caused by delay in decoding.
He plans to produce dyslexia awareness packages for schools so that people will understand and provide right kind of help to such persons to create new learning opportunities.
