Have you played with basic layout like line spacing, left justified vs full justification, increased spacing between paragraphs etc? There’s pretty good data that all of those increase readability and reading speed by giving you more features on the page to anchor on.
I’m not visually impaired (not more than the average for my age anyway) but I saw a significant reading speed and comfort increase when I implemented all of those recommendations alongside a comfortably readable font. I imagine they’d work well with Open Dyslexic or a hyperlegible font too.
nandeEbisu@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I’m a lifelong stutterer, I definitely noticed, especially in school when we had to read aloud, that I stuttered more when reading. I assumed it was more of a self fulfilling prophecy where I would get tense anticipating stuttering while reading so it happened, but would be interested in seeing if research around fonts ended up bearing any fruit.
SomeoneElse@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
I was able to show that people who stutter “stutter” when they read silently, as well as reading aloud! Although pressure/stress also makes stuttering worse, as you said.
That anticipation you mentioned - it’s called your phonological loop. It’s a cognitive process that happens subconsciously when we form words in our heads before speaking or as we’re reading. One school of thought about the cause of stuttering (and what my research supported) was that people who stutter are over vigilant in their phonological loop. Everyone analyses their speech before it’s articulated to a certain extent, but people who stutter seem to over analyse it like they’re almost expecting an error due to their stutter. That over analysis increases cognitive load and makes you even more likely to stutter; a self fulfilling prophecy, as you said.
I’ll take a look at my literature review later if I get a chance - I’ll let you know if I can find a paper about the effect of fonts.