When I was an adolescent, I used to be the dumb kid in the class. Basically anything language related was a total horror. In those days, the early and mid 1980s, for the average primary or secondary school teacher there was basically one diagnose for a wide range of learning problem: "The kid is slow". In those days I absolutely hated reading, I hated school, and quite frankly I had just accepted that I was "slow".
Than at one point, I don't recall the exact details, a teacher presented us with a standard IQ test. After we were scored, the teacher already surprised by me ending up there, a small group of us were given a second test (due to the inaccuracy of the standard IQ test outside of the mid range). Result: Turned out me, the dumbest kid in the class actually had been the smartest kid in the class all along. At that point in time my amazing teacher Dutch stepped in with tremendous enthusiasm. She had no training to recognize any of the wide range of cognitive impairments that we know of today, but by trail and error, she soon found something trivially simple that ended up saving me: A thick black ruler. Using my 'magic' ruler while reading, I ended up my secondary school one year later with the second highest grades for my year. Fast forward a few years and I was at a point that I never imagined possible: I had become a complete book nerd and language lover.

Fast forward an other 25 or so years. I no longer need my ruler. That is, unless some crazy indie author sees it fit to use 100% line-height for his paperback in order to keep the price down. I can basically read everything be it at different speeds depending on two out of a set of 3 factors that I will tell you about that can greatly impact how cognitively impaired people experience reading.

Line height

The number one enabler for me personally is line-height. Give me 100% line height and my reading speed slows down to a crawl. I'll probably start looking for something dark that I can use as a ruler. Give me 130% though, and my reading speed goes up to what is considered 'normal'. Next to reading speed, a larger line-height helps my ability to keep reading without any discomfort for many hours on end. Many cognitively impaired people have similar experiences. If you are a self published author, please please pretty please never be tempted to reduce your page-count by cranking down the line-height.

Font size
I can be short about this one. Font size matters to many cognitively impaired. While for some 14 point fonts are sufficient, others benefit greatly of increasing the font size up to a massive 18 point. Personally I can cope quite well with smaller fonts, but to many others a solid font size is an absolute requirement.

Font

Fonts matter to people with cognitive disabilities. Problem though: There are massive divides between different types of cognitively impaired. Some studies show that a font like Helvetica would be beneficial to dyslexic people. Give me Helvetica and my reading spead drops by about quarter. Personally I've always have had a great liking to Donald Knuth's Computer Modern. When someone suggested I looked at OpenDyslexic at first I didn't find it all that visually appealing. It in fact didn't improve my reading speed when compared to the hand full of fonts I had been preferring. Then however I tried it out for a full book. By all objective measures
it 'performed' the same as my good old Computer Modern, same reading speed, same time before I would need to take a brake. What I experienced however was beyond that, it was what I can only describe as 'full story emergence'. When reading OpenDyslexic it seems, my hypothesis is, to free up a part of my brain that is usually involved with locking down the letters to the lines and allows me to use that part of my brain to build a much more vivid image of the world the author is creating.

Tablets and e-readers

In this day of tablets and e-readers with adjustable fonts, reading can be a whole lot easier to cognitively impaired people than it was before. Unfortunately though, especially on the side of allowing non-standard fonts and on setting line-height, a lot of e-reading solutions fall short.
As far as I have found, there is one shining example when it comes to friendly reading devices and that is the Kobo reader. The Kobo reader isn't cheap though, and given that I remember how big an obstacle an undiscovered cognitive problem can be to the enjoyment of reading, the thought that the cognitively impaired should simply get themselves a Kobo reader truly doesn't cut it with me. Dyslexic people need all the support and encouragement they can get in discovering what works for them.

OpenDyslexic Version

Looking at myself and how far I have come from being the dumb slow kid in class with undiscovered cognitive issues to now enjoying my daily dose of fiction reading and even having self-published a few short stories in a language that isn't my first language, I could almost forget the doubts and struggles of those first few months. I know I also should probably not underestimate the role triple nine percentile intelligence may have played in learning to cope with my cognitive issues. As such I feel a strong need to try and help other cognitively impaired people in finding and nurturing their inner book-lover. Its not a small step to go from a situation where reading multi-line text is the stuff of nightmares to becoming a book lover.

I think its extremely important to offer a cheap or free first step. Well, I will try to walk you true one that I feel is a pretty good fit for those still at that awful side of the hump, especialy those that would benefit from the use of the OpenDyslexic font.

Looking at the font side of things, if we ignore the Kobo reader that comes with openDyslexic pre-installed, there are basically multiple possibilities for an App or reader:


Only built-in fonts supported.
Respect of epub embedded fonts.
Support for side-loading custom fonts.


We shall be looking at the second one. Most people have a tablet, and there is an excellent free e-reader app called FBReader that will respect epub embedded fonts. Alternatively, the web reader for Google Play also will respect epub embedded fonts. In any case, there are free options available to getting epubs with embedded fonts working on a tablet.

Knowing this, it becomes interesting to use a special OpenDyslexic version of epub e-book files as a tool for supporting the cognitively impaired. For Orussian Quarantine I created such an epub by hand by patching the epub that Smashwords provided. Than I figured: hey, I could automate this and I started working on a little conversion server program that I than ended up using to create an OpenDyslexic release of Atheist Afterlife: Opendyslexic Edition.

Both OpenDyslexic editions are available for free on smashwords.

Readers

If you are reading this and are cognitively impaired yourself, than I would like to offer you the free (beta) service to convert the e-books you purchased on Smashwords:

My home-PC conversion server

Authors

If you are an author and would like to publish your own e-books in an OpenDyslexic release, you may also use the same service to convert your e-book. The same service should also work for your full-size cover art file and should create a boxed version of the cover art with the text "OpenDyslexic Edition". You can than submit the generated epub plus cover art to Smashwords as an e-pub only OpenDyslexic release. This should be all you need to do if you don't want to make your OpenDyslexic version free of charge.

If you however feel it suitable to make the OpenDyslexic version free of charge; A word of caution: Many e-readers and e-reading Apps will simply ignore embedded fonts and sometimes even line-height settings and use a system wide font instead, making the OpenDyslexic release look identical to the normal one. For my own free OpenDyslexic editions I've opted to replace my standard copyright notice with the following text:

This version of this eBook is made available at zero cost in support
of people with cognitive disabilities who don't own a reading device
with support for system wide custom fonts. This eBook is a tuned version
of the regular edition made to use a 18 point font with at least 130%
line-height that has been tuned to use the OpenDyslexic font on readers
and devices that support custom fonts. FBReader and Androids Play Books
are examples of applications that don't support system wide custom fonts
but do support embedded custom fonts in eBooks. If you don't suffer from
cognitive disabilities than please return to smashwords and purchase the
regular edition of this eBook. If you plan to read this eBook on a device
or application that supports system wide installation of custom fonts,
than also please return to smashwords and purchase the regular edition of
this eBook.

To authors who would consider this as option for a free version of their books: Please drop me a message, I'll help you with fixing the copyright notice manually.

I truly hope the above rant will convince some other Smashwords published authors to use my (beta) conversion service that I'm currently running on my home PC. If you do run into any issues or have any suggestions than please drop me a message. I believe that with the service I've created, creating an OpenDyslexic edition of Smashwords published books should be easy to do for both readers and authors.

Please Smashwords authors, consider converting your book and publishing it on Smashwords again as OpenDyslexic release. If you feel wary about making it free, fine, look at it as a zero cost way to expand your market. That too could be the act that would let a cognitively impaired person set his/her first step towards becoming a book person, and for me every dyslexic making even small progress to the enjoyment of reading fiction is a major victory.