Design for Dyslexia - Making Online Events Accessible
Earlier this year I was approached by the V&A Museum to live illustrate some sketchnotes for their Youth Collective.
Audio Blog Post: Design for Dyslexia - live illustration and graphic recording for the Victoria and Albert Musuem, London
The British Dyslexic Association’s definition of dyslexia is: ‘A learning difficulty that primarily affects the skills involved in accurate and fluent word reading and spelling.’
Ten percent (10%) of the population are dyslexic; 4% severely so. Dyslexia is hidden and as a result, dyslexic people overcome numerous challenges to make a full contribution to society.- Dyslexic Design
https://cargocollective.com/DyslexicDesign/Dyslexia
I'm trying out something new, I'm doing an audio blog post. it seems extra apt for this particular blog post, since we’re talking about design for dyslexia.
(Or if you prefer to read, I’ve got some good old fashioned words here for you too.)
Recently I was commissioned by the V&A museum in London to create some sketch notes for their event that was to do with the V&A youth collective talking to artists. Simone Brewster and Marine Tanguy, (I just wanted to make sure I'd got their names right.) and Saskia Jiggens was also there. She was an MC for the event and it was brilliant to capture what they were talking about.
The theme was 'Creativity in Containment'.
So these creators were talking about how they'd tackled being creative during a pandemic and locked down when they couldn't access the studio. And they couldn't create the sort of in-person exhibitions and things that they normally would.
And I learned a lot as well. Firstly, because I was looking at creating sketch notes and live illustration that was specifically accessible for people with dyslexia. And also because I'm a fellow creative and my experience of lockdown and everything, while it was similar in a lot of ways, it was also very different. I've been able to work from home throughout the pandemic. I actually got a studio just before the third lockdown in the UK. And I've been able to carry on using it, which is I'm so grateful for, but yeah, it was just really interesting to hear the different perspectives from London. I'm of course in the North of England.
Okay. Let's talk a little bit about the dyslexia aspects of the design. So things I learned were that
1. Bright white as a background is too dazzling, and that can make it really difficult for people with dyslexia to read.
So any off-white colour is good. So for this actual live illustration gig, I used a lot of different colors to experiment. And the sort of creamy off-white was like the one that I preferred the most. I haven't actually spoken to any of my dyslexic friends yet to test which one they preferred, but it's all good.
Another thing that I discovered in my research was that…
2. It's important to have a contrast between the background and text colour.
Eg a dark text on a light (not bright white) background is good. So there really is enough contrast between the background and the foreground.
Another thing was to
3. Avoid pink and green, for colourblindness.
Those colours can really make things difficult.
4. Left-aligning text can help dyslexic people to read
It’s easier to read if the lines all begin in the same place. Stay away from centre-aligning text.
5. Double space your lines
Spaced out = easy to follow and yeah, accessible for everyone. Because I'm a live illustrator, most of my notes are actually pictures rather than words. So I think that naturally made it a bit more accessible for dyslexic learners.
6. Open, friendly fonts (like Comic Sans) can be easier to read
Also the font, like the way that I write is quite, it's not like Comic Sans (designers are always very snobby about comic sans), but it's close enough to Comic Sans to know that it's going to be easy to read.
It's also important to…
7. Use lower case or sentence case
Sentence case makes it easier to recognise letterforms for people with dyslexia.
Design for dyslexia - Katie Chappell (feel free to share with credit)
So I hope that's been useful if you're looking to make your design more accessible for people with dyslexia.
Let me know if you have any questions.
If you'd like to see more live illustration stuff, you can go to www.katiechappell.com/liveillustration.
Hope you've enjoyed this audio blog. This is the first time I've done this. It's quite exciting.
Goodbye.