Story
Luciole
Luciole (French for “firefly”) is a new typeface developed explicitly for visually impaired people.
The result of a two-year collaboration between the Centre Technique Régional pour la Déficience Visuelle
(the Regional Technical Center for Visual Impairment) and the type-design studio typographies.fr,
this project received a grant from the Swiss Ceres Foundation and support from the DIPHE laboratory
at the Université Lumière Lyon 2.
A typeface for visual impairment
Word massing, spacing, the structure of the letters: the concept for Luciole adheres to a dozen specific
design criteria to provide the best possible reading experience for the visually impaired.
Particular care has been taken in drawing the figures, mathematical signs, and punctuation.
A powerful editorial tool
Each style of Luciole contains over seven hundred characters and supports almost all European languages.
The character set also includes many Greek and mathematical symbols for scientific notation.
Luciole aims to facilitate both optimal readability for visually impaired students and efficient deployment
by publishing professionals.
The Luciole font is now used by specialized reference publishers but also by transcribers, teachers, developers.
A typeface to advance research
As a result of this project, three reading tests based studies have been or are currently being carried out with visually impaired students or adults:
− In the DIPHE laboratory, University Lumière Lyon 2 [study completed, currently being published]
− In the CTRDV's ophthalmological assessment [study completed]
− As part of the ISTR's graduation project, Department of Orthoptics, University Lyon 1 [study completed]
These three studies reveal a preference of visually impaired readers in favor of Luciole.
Download the typeface
Luciole is available for download under a
Creative Commons Attribution license,
which covers use (including commercial use) and distribution of the typeface for free.
Simply download the fonts on the Luciole website and move the files to the appropriate Fonts folder on your computer.
