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The Impact of a Specialized Font on the Reading Performance of Elementary Children with Reading Disability

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Abstract

Dyslexie is a specialized font style that was designed to enhance reading performance in students with reading disabilities. The present study sought to examine Dyslexie’s impact, compared to two commonly used fonts, on reading performance while controlling for Dyslexie’s large size and spacing. We recruited 36 fourth and fifth grade students identified by their school districts as having a specific learning disability in the area of reading, asked them to read three stories aloud, and measured the students’ speed, accuracy, and comprehension. We found that Dyslexie, when compared to other common fonts that have been adjusted to control for Dyslexie’s large size and spacing, appears to have no effect on readers’ accuracy, fluency, or comprehension.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Graduate Psychology, James Madison University, 70 Alumnae Drive, Harrisonburg, VA, 22802, USA

    Steven L. Powell & Ashton D. Trice

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  1. Steven L. Powell
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  2. Ashton D. Trice
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Correspondence to Steven L. Powell.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Powell, S.L., Trice, A.D. The Impact of a Specialized Font on the Reading Performance of Elementary Children with Reading Disability. Contemp School Psychol 24, 34–40 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40688-019-00225-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40688-019-00225-4

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