Font change

April 25, 2025

I have changed the font on the site from Lora (headings) and Open Sans (body) to Atkinson Hyperlegible Next to improve accessibility and load times.

Atkinson Hyperlegible Next uses approximately 237 KB, while the previous two fonts use a combined total of 1.5 MB. I have adjusted the style sheet on the site to help accommodate this new font. While being technically more readable, it is also more compact and smaller than the previous fonts. I like the difference between the uppercase ‘I’ and lowercase ‘l’ and the zero numeral ‘0’ and uppercase ‘O’ — features I find relatively rare in sans-serif fonts.

If you are a frequent return visitor to my site, give yourself some patience to adjust, as any change may seem off at first.

If the font does not appear to load correctly, give it a day (my site generally uses a short cache policy) or force a refresh in your browser (instructions below):

• Using Google Chrome on Windows: Ctrl+F5
• Using Google Chrome on Mac: Command+Shift+R

Monospace

I also added a monospace version of the font, bringing the total size of fonts on the site to 346 KB — still a significant reduction. However, so far, I have only used monospace in one news post from 2023.

Designed specifically for accessibility

Atkinson Hyperlegible Next is the successor to Atkinson Hyperlegible, which supports more languages, glyphs, and weights. The font is a product of the Braille Institute of America, developed by Applied Design Works. The purpose of the font is to be readable to those with low vision.

According to Google, this font is relatively rare on the web (less than 1 million weekly API requests as of April 25, 2025 — “only” more than 1000 sites).