New font "Dyslexie" helps people with dyslexia read
scientificamerican.com$69 for a download link for "Home" use? I would think if you'd designed something that would help dyslexics read (a genuine problem, a solution to which would benefit tens of thousands), you'd want it widely adopted, the better to help more people. If it's effective, individual dyslexic students could use it on laptops to make their own notes more readable, or set it as the default font in their browser to make general net use easier. A huge boon, but having a price this high will be a barrier.
Also, there's no info on the repertoire; does it have any characters outside the x20-xff range?
Any actual dyslexics tried it?
The creator is dyslexic and the site discusses a study done among dyslexic students at Uni Twente.
Given the other comments on the thread that indicate that there are already free clones available, I'd say that it's probably reasonable for him to ask for compensation for his work and investment in tools.
It's in line with commercial font licensing.
I remember seeing this on reddit a long time ago. Then a couple days later a redditor created a cheaper alternative: http://www.pixelscript.net/gilldyslexic/ Then, when I was tring to find the link, I found an open-source alternative: http://opendyslexic.org/
It's great to see designers focusing on this issue. Interestingly, fonts that "assist" people with dyslexia have been around for quite a while. I wrote an article for Wired about the Read Regular font in 2003: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2003/10/60834
You might also find this interesting: http://www.iansyst.co.uk/about-us/resources/directory/articl...
If this works, why not go a step further and add decoration or accenting to the characters to better anchor them? Not unlike how on dice 6 and 9 are differentiated by an underline.
The slight deformity seems perhaps too subtle.
There are already alternate characters buried in the Unicode character space that could serve as simple substitutes, like ḏ or ḃ or ṗ.