Lexica Ultralegible is a new font for low-vision readers

Lexica Ultralegible is a purpose-built sans-serif typeface for low-vision readers, derived from the Braille Institute’s Atkinson Hyperlegible (designed by Elliott Scott in 2019). It addresses the common problem that partially sighted people - many of whom do not read braille - have trouble distinguishing similar characters in conventional fonts. The font builds on that usability research and the broader context that over 2.2 billion people worldwide have some form of vision impairment, aiming to make individual glyphs more visually distinct at small sizes and under blur.

Technically, Lexica Ultralegible expands the original design with 589 glyphs per font (up from 335), supports 102 languages (versus 27), adds standard ligatures, improved kerning, and an alternative zero with a diagonal slash that avoids confusion with the Danish Ø. It’s available in four styles across two weights (Regular/Italic 400 and Bold/Bold Italic 700), released under the Open Font License and downloadable from GitHub. Practical implementation notes include using the WOFF2 files via @font-face, preloading with crossorigin, font-display: block to avoid Flash of Unstyled Text, and disabling common ligatures for headings and large display text. The name change from “Atkinson Hyperlegible Pro” respects licensing and the project maintainer Jacob Perez.