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Unknown: As many of you know,
I've worked with kids with
disabilities for about 15 years
or so, and before that, I worked
adult rehab.
One of my students
kept having trouble with
writing small enough for his
age.
Everything was always so big,
and I was truly having difficult
time with the letter A
and
oh gosh, maybe three years into
me treating him, his mom hands
me this writing book that he had
gotten from school, and I went,
I know exactly I like. I knew
instantly. I knew instantly why
he kept having trouble with
writing,
though, especially the letter A
because the font that the book
had in it for the practice
was the two story A, and the one
I was trying to teach him to use
was the one story A. Now, what
do I mean by a story? You know,
the A that has like the circles.
Now I'm talking lowercase the
circle at the bottom, and then
there's one that has like a
little flag on top. They call
that the two story A, where the
one that's a circle with just a
line is the one story A. So you
understand what I mean by the
different stories well,
the moment
I saw this, I went, I need to
talk to his teacher. So I talked
to his teacher, and we converted
a bunch of the stuff that he was
doing in school with the font
that I recommended,
the one that I knew at the time
was century Gothic. What I
discovered as I was going to
write my book was century Gothic
was owned by Microsoft. So if
you use Microsoft, sensory
Gothic is a very good option to
helping take kids
writing and what they need to
read and put it into something
that's a little bit easier.
Google, you has a font called
Pop ins that one works extremely
well as well. It's basically the
same font as the one in
Microsoft. It's a little bit
thicker, so sometimes it's
easier for the kids to read
because of it of its thickness,
so Poppins is sometimes easier
to read than the sensory Gothic.
But I still kept, still kept
looking, still kept looking for
the font that would be ideal for
this student.
One of the things I found after
much searching was Lex and deca,
l, e x, e, n, d, DECA. Now,
lexand has several different
fonts, but DECA seemed to be the
one that fit this student the
best. Now by this time, this
child is in fifth grade, still
struggling to write any smaller
than a second grade level. So we
are not getting to be able to
write on any three lined
notebook paper. He was writing
almost double that size, so
anything that he wrote looked
sloppy when he would write it on
the three line paper, granite.
He was going to cyber school, so
much of his work was also on the
computer. But that didn't mean
that he was never writing. So
mom wanted him to have basic
writing skills so that he could
help her with grocery list and
things like that.
So we continued to try to work
to get his writing smaller so
that he could do better as he
got older, and be able to use
the regular paper that was our
goal. Once I discovered that he
was having the trouble with the
writing paper that was in the
writing notebook. Then Mind you,
this is a
program that there's also a
reading program that is made for
kids with disabilities, so the
reading program and the writing
program were using the same
font.
They weren't conducive to the
other discipline.
So he continued to struggle,
until we kind of worked that
through and figured out that
little dilemma.
As I learned more about Orton
Gillingham and I learned more
about writing skills and reading
skills, one of the fonts that
kept coming up was.
Open Dyslexic.
What's the problem with Open
Dyslexic from a writing
perspective, is that big, wide
bottom prevents a translation to
writing very well. So even
though
he was using Open Dyslexic for
some of his reading tasks, we
still had to translate that into
one of the other fonts
if there was a writing task
involved, so that we could get
it to a point where he could
make that transition to writing.
Now I've gone on and on. I've
talked a lot about this story,
but I think that the background
to this is very important here,
as we talk about why I chose
Poppins as the font for
handwriting. Brain, body
disconnect.
I realize that fonts make it or
break it with some kids when
they're learning how to write.
Fast forward to today, when I am
talking about fonts that you use
on a computer, so that
it's easy for somebody to read a
website, read a book online,
when I go to look at Kindle,
it doesn't even give me Poppins
as a choice, Open Dyslexic, I
believe is there but,
but Poppins, I don't believe,
was a choice. The closest one
was the veranda,
and that still doesn't have all
the fonts the way that we write
them.
None, none. I can't still to
this day, cannot find a font
that totally makes the letters
in print the way we make them
when we hand write them.
Lexan has been the closest that
I find. Found that being said,
the reason that one's even
different than Poppins is
because it's because of the
capital I, the cross on the top
of the cross on the bottom are
there in lexan, many other
fonts. It's just a vertical
line. Well, that vertical line
gets confusing when it's a
lowercase L or a number one.
Many of them on the number one,
they'll put a little flag on it
so that you can tell that it's a
one versus an L or a capital I,
but most of the fonts out there
still only use a single line for
that capital I. It causes
trouble when we're looking at
accessibility online.
So one of the things that I am
moving towards, I cannot wait to
tell you, and I talk about this,
it is going to be something
about being accessible online.
You have a great weekend, and I
will see you next week. You.