You may not have heard of a dyslexic font face for lawyers. However, you can integrate it easily into LawWare’s practice management software.
Dyslexia is a neurological difference and can have a significant impact during education, in the workplace and in everyday life. As each person is unique, so is everyone’s experience of dyslexia. It can range from mild to severe, and it can co-occur with other learning differences. Usually it runs in families and is a life-long condition.
It is important to remember that there are positives to thinking differently. Many dyslexic people show strengths in areas such as reasoning and in visual and creative fields.
How it works.
A number of LawWare clients recently requested the addition of the OpenDyslexic font on their LawCloud system. OpenDyslexic is a typeface designed to aid some common symptoms of dyslexia. If you’d like to see what it looks like, visit the font’s website.
OpenDyslexic is free to use. The newest version now uses the SIL-OFL licence. Therefore, you can use it for personal use, business use, education, books, ebook readers, applications, websites and any other project or purpose you need.
OpenDyslexic is not a cure, a complete solution, or something you should apply uniformly to everyone. Its intention is to address contrast/blindness, letter confusion or rotation, and crowding. The typeface includes regular, bold, italic, and bold-italic styles, and 2 typefaces: OpenDyslexic, and OpenDyslexic-Alta.
OpenDyslexic helps with some of the symptoms of dyslexia. Letters have heavy weighted bottoms to show direction. You can quickly figure out which part of the letter is down. This aids in recognizing the correct letter and sometimes helps to keep your brain from rotating them around. Consistently weighted bottoms can also help reinforce the line of text. The unique shapes of each letter can help prevent confusion through flipping and swapping.
Implementation.
Just like any other font face, you can easily upload it to LawCloud servers. As a result, you can use it in Microsoft applications as part of the LawCloud system.
LawWare made a donation to the font’s website to encourage further development of the aid. If you think this simple solution can be of benefit to your legal business, please contact us.
More about dyslexia.
What is it?
Many people misunderstand dyslexia. It is a learning difference which primarily affects reading and writing skills. However, it does not only affect these skills. Dyslexia is actually about information processing. Dyslexic people may have difficulty processing and remembering information they see and hear. This can affect learning and the acquisition of literacy skills. Dyslexia can also impact on other areas such as organisational skills.
Definition of dyslexia.
The British Dyslexia Association gives the following definition:
- Dyslexia is a learning difficulty that primarily affects the skills involved in accurate and fluent word reading and spelling.
- Characteristic features of dyslexia are difficulties in phonological awareness, verbal memory and verbal processing speed.
- Dyslexia occurs across the range of intellectual abilities.
- It is best thought of as a continuum, not a distinct category, and there are no clear cut-off points.
- Co-occurring difficulties may be seen in aspects of language, motor co-ordination, mental calculation, concentration and personal organisation, but these are not, by themselves, markers of dyslexia.
- A good indication of the severity and persistence of dyslexic difficulties can be gained by examining how the individual responds or has responded to well-founded intervention.
In addition to these characteristics, the British Dyslexia Association (BDA) acknowledges the visual and auditory processing difficulties that some individuals with dyslexia can experience and points out that dyslexic readers can show a combination of abilities and difficulties that affect the learning process.
Video from The British Dyslexia Association.
For more information about dyslexic font for lawyers, please contact us.
