Clarity Sans is the first typeface for people with Cataracts.
Older adults struggle to read text on their mobile phones. While there are various reasons for this occurring, one of the largest groups it affects is people with cataracts. Cataracts is a vision disorder that causes the eye lenses to become cloudy, and blurs vision. People with cataracts struggle on a daily basis to interact with their phones and therefore are unable to have the same user experience as others who do not have impaired vision.
Instead of putting a bandaid on the issue, I addressed the root of the issue of typeface legibility. Type designers intended fonts like Verdana and Arial to be used as typefaces for everything, but they do not accommodate the needs of those with vision issues. Many people living with Cataracts do not have the resources to fix them and may live with the blurred vision for life.I made Clarity Sans to fill this gap.
Designer, Researcher
Clarity Sans addresses the root issues of typeface legibility for people living with Cataracts. The typeface has a large x-height, a medium weight, slight weight contrast, large counters, accentuated parts of letterforms, and high tracking will increase readability at small sizes on screens for people with Cataracts.
I needed to get a good grasp of what Cataracts are and how they affect users. I found that cataracts are a disease that affects almost everyone as they grow older; in fact, it is the leading cause of low vision and blindness. Cataracts are a clouding of the eye’s natural lens, causing visual impairment characterized by blurry vision and light sensitivity. I also did research on typeface legibility in general: what makes letterforms distinguishable, what is the ideal font weight, x-height, amount of contrast, and letterspacing. My research findings helped me form the set of rules I used to create the typeface.
Early sketches had the most exploration. I was still discovering what would and wouldn't be effective. I had set myself up for a large undertaking; I needed the letterforms to have enough open space in them to be distinguishable when blurred, but still be bold and look like one cohesive family. Moving into Glyphs was another process with a lot of iteration over the course of a few months. The final step of creating the typeface was doing the tracking and kerning to ensure ease of readability.
Meeting with individuals with cataracts really helped me know if I was on the right track. The users were able to look at the typeface on devices in various sizes. They were reading real copy as well as dummy copy to be able to look at the letters themselves and how they work together. I got paramount feedback on letters that still weren’t as legible as they could be. For example, early on some of the rounded letters (o, e, a) were not bold enough, and letters like the lowercase f and k needed to be taller. Speaking with users for Clarity Sans also helped me learn how cataracts affect people's lives on a daily basis. These are quotes from the user testers:
This project was part of an exhibition at The Center For Visual Arts in Denver, Colorado. Deciding how to display this typeface was interesting because I knew I wanted to display the typeface on mobile screens, but I also needed to show how it may look for a user with Cataracts, so I created a display of cell phones with text messages talking about cataracts that progressively get more and more blurry from the left screen to the right screen. Along with that, I had an accompanying element that highlighted the ways I made Clarity Sans legible.
My hope for Clarity Sans is that it will continue to be an ongoing project, I want to distribute the typeface to people with Cataracts and over time, refine and grow the set of letters, and expand it to be compatible with more languages.
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