I love to read, I always have, despite the best efforts of secondary school to kill any interest in reading. But I’ve always been a slow reader, taking ages to read books that others finish in a matter of hours. It wasn’t until after I’d left education that I managed to get tested, then diagnosed with mild Dyslexia. It’s not enough to majorly hinder my every day life, but it does lead to some cracking spelling mistakes and it really slows down my reading speed.
Now I’ve written before about my Kindle. I love this device, I carry it with me everywhere. Before I bought the device I tried out some of my friends Kindles, but because they weren’t mine I couldn’t really change any of the settings.
With my own kindle in my hands, I got to explore the options more. In the font selection box, along with the fonts you might expect, I found one called Open Dyslexic. Out of curiosity, I selected it to see what it’s like. It took me a little while to get used to the new font. But having done so I’ve been amazed. I’m now using a smaller font size, and my reading speed has almost doubled.
The Kindle has a counter in the bottom left of the screen giving time remaining on the current book, which is rather useful. This has shown that I’m getting through books much faster. I was sceptical to start with, it’s a font that on first look is a bit weird. But after a few minutes the change became noticeable. It’s quite a shock now when I move back to a dead tree book.
I’ve been amazed that a simple font change could make such a difference. It’s improved my reading experience and allows me to read more than I otherwise would have time for. If you are a slow reader, have dyslexia or are just curious, you may find that a change of font can make a real difference.
Now I wonder how to give the option to view this blog with the Open Dyslexic a font…
Postscript: The Open Dyslexic site has lots of useful information on how you can install the font on your devices, it’s well worth checking out – http://opendyslexic.org/