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Comment by soupfordummies

5 days ago

"[Rubio] ...calling his predecessor Antony Blinken's decision to adopt Calibri a "wasteful" diversity move..."

Bro what. It was the default font in Microsoft for many years thus, it was the default font for most office software for many years -- just like Times New Roman was before.

What.

The article says it's better than Times New Roman because it's easier to read for those with disabilities - so of course the government needs to make things worse for them. Wonder if someone could sue over these kinds of changes that are being deliberately made to be less accessible.

  • Is that even true? The article is really vague on the type of disability and basically just claims that serifs are harder to read.

    Generally sans-serif is advisable for small sizes, although I assume the main things are large open counters, tall x-height and low stroke contrast.

    I’ve often read that dyslexics favor strongly distinctive characters and “grounded”, bottom-heavy letterforms. I feel like serifs actually sound pretty good there.

    It’s also important to consider whether such studies were conducted before or after high-PPI displays became prevalent and leveled the playing field for serifs.

    • The wiki explicitly mension the typical sans disadvantage: "One potential source of confusion in Calibri is a visible homoglyph, a pair of easily confused characters: the lowercase letter L and the uppercase letter i (l and I) of the Latin script are effectively indistinguishable."

      So while I prefer Calibri as TNR has been the default for longer and hence is more boring to me, I can understand people might prefer a serif font for readability.

  • Yeah. I have a dis-a-bility. It’s now 2200 and I’ve been working since 0830. My eyes are tired and these 8’s look like 0’s, 5’s look like 6’s. What a tool.

    Now! Everything in Fraktur! HH.