Here’s a week-old news story which is still worth a mention.
The save for later service Pocket rolled out an update for its app for iPad and iPhone late last week which could well make the app more useful for dyslexic readers.
In addition to adding customization options for the paid Pocket Premium service (launched in May 2014), Pocket has also added a new font option: Dyslexie.
Like the Open Dyslexic font which Amazon added to the Kindle only a few weeks ago, Dyslexie is designed to make it easier for readers with dyslexia to recognize the characters and words.
It works by bolding certain parts of each character, and by subtly twisting parts of each character (or at least that is what I think I am seeing). There is some dispute among experts whether this helps or not, but as you can see in the above screenshot the font does look distinctive.
If you use it, please let me know if it helps. All I got out of it was a weird sense of vertigo.
In related news, Pockets also gave its paying customers seven new font options as well as control over margins and line spacing. (I am more of an Instapaper user, so I can’t tell you what they look like.)
All of the options can be found in the formatting menu (the aA icon), and you can find the app in iTunes.
O O O
Changelog
Introducing a new customizable reading experience with Pocket Premium!
Pocket Premium subscribers can now choose between 7 beautiful new reading fonts, and fine-tune their reading layout with custom margin width and line-height spacing options. In addition, we’ve added Auto Dark Mode, which automatically switches your reading theme based on your location and ambient light.
We also added Dyslexie for all users, a font which was designed to make reading more pleasurable for people with dyslexia.
Other changes in this version include:
- Fixed a layout issue when launching Pocket in landscape orientation on iPad
- Fixed an issue where highlighted text wasn’t included when sharing to other apps
- Reduced the number of taps required for sharing to Evernote
- Additional bug fixes and improvements
