Dyslexia Awareness Month 2021: Try The Lexend Font!

We've seen a lot of posts online highlighting that October is Dyslexia Awareness Month. That's a great poke for us to share a really helpful, practical way that you can support the array of learners in your classroom, especially those with dyslexia.

Enter the Lexend font family!

Lexend is a beautiful font for everyday use in your instruction and in student writing. It's available as a free addition to anyone's Google fonts, which makes it usable in Google Docs, Slides, and even across the majority of web content in Google Chrome.

You can read all about it at the Lexend website, where there's loads of information on the research and development that went into this font. The TL:DR is that this font was developed to optimize reading performance in readers of all ages. It can also be adjusted in scaling and spacing to match a user's individual words per minute (WPM).

To get started with Lexend in your Google account:

1. Open any Google Doc or Slides presentation.
2. Open the font dropdown menu.
3. Select More fonts. You'll see a pop-up window like the one below.
4. If the Lexend group isn't already on your list of available fonts, then type "lexend" into the search bar. You'll see the whole family appear.
5. Select one or more of them to add them to your everyday fonts list.
6. Select OK to finish up.
7. Select some text, and switch the font to a Lexend family font to view it!

We use the basic font, Lexend Deca, in a lot of different materials that we send out for teachers and students. What better way to observe Dyslexia Awareness Month than to switch to Lexend yourself? Not only will it support your readers, but it will refresh all of that content that's currently written in the ever-controversial Comic Sans! : )