What is dyslexia-friendly mode?
Dyslexia-friendly mode is built to increase webpage legibility for users with learning disorders like dyslexia. It not only helps those with said disorders, but also users who prefer visual modifications for easier reading.
How many users really have dyslexia?
According to Dyslexia Center of Utah, tne in five students, or 15-20% of the population, has a language based learning disability. Dyslexia is the most common of the language based learning disabilities. This means that over 50 Million users who use the web have a learning disorder and might not be able to use your website easily. It is very important to ensure your website can be used by users with dyslexia.
How can Agastya help?
There are specialized fonts designed to make reading with dyslexia easily, such as Open Dyslexic. The impact of these typefaces is hard to measure, but there is research which suggests that it does indeed increase reading speeds for some users with dyslexia. Furthermore, it is also observed that a black-on-yellow color combination also plays a role in increasing reading speed, along with a combination of increased letter spacing and line height. Agastya makes all of these changes to your website when a user turns on Dyslexia-friendly mode automatically, so you don’t have to do anything.
Is there any research backing this?
Yes! Being a research-driven company, it is very important for us to truly test and compare results with real users with dyslexia. In a study done by the University of Twente in the Netherlands, it was found that using dyslexia-friendly fonts may increase reading speed for users with dyslexia.
Furthermore, our own independent research concluded a 20% increase in reading speed when testing this mode with school students who have dyslexia (using Augmenta11y on an Android smartphone). Since dyslexia is a diverse problem with no one-size-fits-all solution, what might work for one user might not for another, but it is important to have necessary features in place to help as many users as we can access your content.