It is holiday greeting card time!
Tis the season to remember friends and family, whether across the street or across the globe. Be nice to those on your mailing list who may have low vision, and consider using a font with consistent stroke widths, open counterforms, and pronounced ascenders and descenders to make reading easier for them. Three fonts you may already be familiar with that have these features are; Century Schoolbook, Arial, and Frutiger Bold.
But an even better font option may be APHont™ (pronounced Ay’-font). It was developed by the American Printing House (APH) for the Blind, specifically for low vision readers. It embraces the features found most readable by people with low vision, and when magnified, it maintains its integrity. If you are a person with low vision, or wish to send written communication to someone who is, the entire APHont Suite is available free-of-charge from the APH.
Please explain the following terms: open counterforms, pronounced ascenders & descenders. Thanks.
Hi Terri,
These terms all relate to typography, which is the style and appearance of printed matter.
Counter:“A counter is the area of a letter that is entirely or partially enclosed by a letter form or a symbol (the counter-space/the hole of). Letters containing closed counters include A, B, D, O, P, Q, R, a, b, d, e, g, o, p, and q. Letters containing open counters include c, f, h, i, s etc. The digits 0, 4, 6, 8, and 9 also possess a counter.” An open counterform would be a defined space in open counters.
Ascender: “The part of a lower-case letter that is taller than the font’s x-height.” See this link for further explanation and an illustration of this term: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascender_%28typography%29
Descender: “A descender is the portion of a letter that extends below the baseline of a font.” See this link for further explanation and an illustration of this term: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descender
I hope this helps!