boost: Make AO3 Easier to Read

Thanks to runpunkrun for pointing me to ElectricAlice’s amazing AO3 skin tutorial for dyslexic readers: both desktop and mobile versions, light and dark.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30918077

ElectricAlice walks you through every change, and sensibly hosts the code on GitHub (so it can be quickly/updated and maintain its comments, which AO3 reportedly strips from CSS you use in work skins).

This highly commented code requires almost zero understanding to modify the font, font size, spacing between lines, paragraphs, and characters, text width for body, comments, and blurbs.

Coincidentally, I’ve been loving a new sans serif font, which is now my default on browser and ereaders (where possible).

Easier Reading Anywhere with Atkinson Hyperlegible

The Braille Institute, in Los Angeles, has designed and released a new, free OpenType font called Atkinson Hyperlegible:

https://brailleinstitute.org/freefont

Atkinson Hyperlegible is a neo-grotesque typeface for the Braille Institute of America, Inc. Applied Design fulfilled the brief to increase legibility for readers with low vision. They also improved character recognition — making it easy to distinguish zeroes and uppercase Os, Es and Fs, ones, uppercase Is and lowercase ls

And because the universe is filled with type geeks, someone’s attempted a monospace version

( screenshot of this entry demonstrate legibility )

So the next step is … modifying the Dyslexic AO3 Skin for large print readers. I’m pretty confident I’m capable of this, and will announce when complete.