Asklemmy

This is super helpful! Fun fact - Erewhon is also a small chain of very high end markets in Los Angeles. Now I'm going to have to research what this word means and who came up with it first.

It feels like low effort to use the default Office font when there are so many other options, but in my sans serif font tests Calibri ended up looking the best so far. I really didn't want to like it! Curious where you think serif fonts belong? I don't know shit about fonts/graphic design...

improvements to accessibility are hard to argue with.

It's pretty good, yes. But other fonts not specifically designed for this fare quite well in contrast to what you'd believe: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/garethfordwilliams_dont-believe-the-type-axe-con-2021-activity-6904510195884445696-93xG

Our designs have to comply with ADA, so accessibility is definitely a familiar consideration. This looks like any other professional looking sans-serif font, so if it's more accessible for low vision/vision impaired people, all the better! I like that uppercase i and lowercase L are distinguishable, which is a personal peeve I have with some sans serif fonts. Thanks for the suggestion!

As do I, though mainly for headings. Body text is something thin and screen legible as most of my docs are not printed.

Thanks for the font rec. I despise Word but have colleagues who would be unable to function in something like LaTeX. Oh well...

Dyslexie was one of the first fonts I looked at specifically for accessibility purposes. Unfortunately, despite it's utility, it looks too much like a 'fun' font for our documents. Our reports are publicly published for the legal/administrative record, and need to reflect that level of professionalism. :/

Someone else suggested a font that's helpful for vision impaired people that I will take forward in this process, so maybe I can get a different accessible font through. Really appreciating the thoughtfulness for people with various reading challenges!

Newer research actually says that it mostly doesn't matter. Use a readable sans or serif, there's no measurable difference.[1][2][3]

[1] Wery, J.J., Diliberto, J.A. The effect of a specialized dyslexia font, OpenDyslexic, on reading rate and accuracy. Ann. of Dyslexia 67, 114–127 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11881-016-0127-1
[2] Kuster, S.M., van Weerdenburg, M., Gompel, M. et al. Dyslexie font does not benefit reading in children with or without dyslexia. Ann. of Dyslexia 68, 25–42 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11881-017-0154-6
[3] Rello, L., Baeza-Yates, R. How to present more readable text for people with dyslexia. Univ Access Inf Soc 16, 29–49 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-015-0438-8

Isn't TNR a print font? It looks rather bad on a screen actually. I certainly wouldn't (and never have) use it for a technical report.

OpenDyslexic if I’m reading it myself. Especially for a long technical report because I don’t need that eye strain.

Thanks for the recs. I thought one of the fonts in the link was called Potato Sans, so now that one is my new personal favorite forever, even if it's actually called Pontano Sans. :D

Definitely need to avoid giant fixed-width fonts. My reports often run close to 100 pgs with Times New Roman, and using a typewriter font would blow them up even more. I'll look into the open source suggestions, thanks!