APHont For The Visually Impaired?

Aiming for satisfying the needs of the aging and visually impaired, the APH produces a font designed to be readable. Did they miss the mark slightly?

Eyes: not all are created equal.

Not only that, but as the bulk of the so-called ‘baby-boom’ public moves deep into what is also so-called “middle-age”, it’s a physical fact that eyesight deteriorates; it is said that sometime in a person’s 40’s that the eye’s lens begins to lose some of its youthful elasticity. Those with good to average eyesight begin to have to squint, then eventually graduate to glasses. As the bulge in the population pyramid moves north, that audience is going to be huge.

It is to answer this need that the American Printing House for the Blind (APH) have created a font that is now being offered free via their site: APHont (pronounced “a font”–follow the link to get a copy as a PC .exe file).

The features of the font that are said to enhance readability (see the illustration) are thus (from the APH’s website):

• More even spacing between letters.
• Higher crossbars.
• No serifs.
• Wider letters.
• Heavier letters.
• Underslung “j” and “q”.
• Letters more open.
• Larger punctuation marks

Mere Remodel or Extreme Makeover?

The guidelines seem fairly common sense: after all, having simple forms with some features accentuated and free of serifous frou-frou strikes one as something one might want to do: simple is better, after all.

However, the font, while readable isn’t, in our opinion, terribly attractive, looking rather like an underdeveloped Myriad.

Maybe simple isn’t better, at least not so much. In a posting on her graphic design forum blog, Susan Kirkland makes the case that the following points are just as important for readablilty as simple forms simply rendered:

• Familiarity: forms similar to forms we’ve seen before are more quickly recognizable
• Contrast: letterforms are defined by their negative space
• Tightly captured negative space enhances the letterforms
• Serifs enhance the ability of the letterforms to capture that negative space

The points make sense to us on a gut level, and as we broke open InDesign and played around with a few in order to test out these observations, it occurred to us that they are good general things to go by in font design, regardless of the size or audience.

Our Verdict: A Good Start

In an article on the AIGA website, Paul Nini opines about APHont thus:

We couldn’t put in any more eloquently. To expand upon the aesthetic aspect, we find that the font, while readable, lacks a certain sense of style, as we’ve found whenever we pickup a large-type book for the visually impaired; the type typically is simply enlarged versions of fonts we find at smaller sizes for regularly-sighted readers.

We wonder what sort of font would originate if a font were designed to look “comfortable in its own skin” at large sizes; not merely an upsized version of a common type font or something designed to a “simple is more readable” benchmark. Indeed, what kind of font would result if a designer designed, with an aesthetic eye, a typeface only designed to be printed at larger sizes, with all the finesse and subtlety that went into your normal sized Garamond or Myriad?

Something truly remarkable, we think.

APHont is, despite its flaws, a creditable good start. Let’s hope APH takes it to the next level.