At Tailo our mission is to create a customised reading environment for neurodivergent students that allows them to learn, thrive and feel empowered, and as a result, we’re constantly working to improve the features of our software to better support students. This week we’re excited to announce the latest feature addition to Tailo: OpenDyslexic!
Since it’s Dyslexia Awareness Week, what better time than now to delve into the benefits of this amazing addition? Whether you teach at college or university, or you’re a DSA assessor, understanding the benefits of the OpenDyslexic font is crucial in supporting the success of dyslexic students.
One of the key features of Tailo allows students to tailor a visual reading environment to suit their reading style, changing things like background colours, fonts and font spacing. Tailo now offers the OpenDyslexic font, which has been specifically designed for dyslexic people. Here are some of the ways that OpenDyslexic can help students:
- Distinctive Letter Shapes: The font features unique letter designs, which help prevent common reading errors like letter flipping or confusing similar-looking letters.
- Weighted Bottoms: The letters have a heavier bottom, which can help anchor them visually on the page, reducing the tendency for letters to seem like they’re floating.
- Increased Spacing: OpenDyslexic often includes wider spacing between letters and words, making text easier to read and reducing crowding.
- Clear Differentiation: Characters are designed to be easily distinguishable from one another, which helps with decoding and improves overall reading fluency.
Source: Abbie Gonzalez, creator of OpenDyslexic.
These features combined can create a more supportive reading experience for dyslexic students, helping to boost confidence and comprehension. Tailo offers the OpenDyslexic font, as well as other features for dyslexic users including:
- Custom extraction technology, analyzing a document to pull out key content, images, tables, and diagrams in a way that is ordered and visually clear.
- Looking up the definition of words by simply highlighting them and clicking ‘define’.
- Providing content summaries to help a student determine if a document is relevant.
Where can students access Tailo?
Tailo is now available through Disabled Students’ Allowance. Disabled Students’ Allowance is a grant that helps with the costs of studying with a disability, providing access to things like one-to-one support, travel allowance, equipment and technology. DSA is available for all UK students in higher education level 4 or above, with a diagnosis of a disability defined under the Equality Act of 2010.
If you’re a DSA assessor, you can recommend Tailo in your needs assessments for dyslexic and neurodivergent students as well as any students that struggle with reading tasks.
Find out more about the benefits of Tailo here.