Monotype joins academic group the Readability Consortium to make the internet more readable

From a tiny serif flourish to the distance between an “a” and a “b,” the way that a font is designed can have a major consequences for how easy it is to comprehend.



That’s something The Readability Consortium (TRC), a research organization dedicated to improving digital readability, takes seriously. Yesterday, TRC announced that it would be bolstering its typography research through a collaboration with the typesetting company Monotype . 



The organization’s mission is to find evidence-backed ways to improve digital reading comprehension, thereby making the internet a more accessible place. Its brain power is sourced from experts at the University of Central Florida, where it is based, as well as Adobe, Google, nonprofit group Readability Matters, and now Monotype. The consortium includes a community of over 200 scientists and academics across various disciplines.



TRC’s areas of study include developing better fonts for certain populations (like those with dyslexia ) and situations (like driving). The organization has also found that font comprehension can be highly personal, meaning that every individual might have a different font that would best suit their needs. That’s where Monotype comes in.



“Monotype holds one of the largest font catalogs in the world, and one of the largest catalogs of non-latin scripts,” Ben D. Sawyer, director of TRC, wrote in an email to Fast Company . “TRC’s interest in how fonts can be matched to populations, individuals, or contexts is a natural match with Monotype’s interests in the who, what, and where of matching font properties with markets.”



To start, Sawyer says Monotype is set to help TRC expand its research from the Latin alphabet to scripts like Japanese, Arabic, and Mandarin Chinese. Monotype will also pitch in with researching the readability of typefaces in operational settings, including on the road, mid-flight, or in medical record systems. Moving forward, Monotype will advance the TRC’s mission using more than a century of experience in building and collecting fonts.



“At Monotype we often talk about the power of type to express. We also understand that—at its core—type needs to communicate written content clearly and effectively,” Tom Rickner, head of Monotype, said in a press release. “We look forward to collaborating with The Readability Consortium to better understand what makes one type more readable than another, as we try to bring readability to all.”