Comic Sans MS gets a bad rap. It’s not formal enough. Too ‘cartoony’. There have even been campaigns to ban it. Whether these criticisms are light-hearted or serious - and if they are serious, that says more about the critic than the typeface - doesn’t matter because, however you slice it, Comic Sans isn’t given the time of day. 

However, it’s the recommended typeface of the British Dyslexia Foundation, and given that 6.3 million people in the UK (roughly 10% of the population) have the condition, it seems a weird thing to hate on. This Global Accessibility Awareness Day, I’m going to defend Comic Sans.

Hear me out. First of all, it’s highly accessible - in more than one sense of the word. When it comes to legibility, the individual characters are really easy to pick out, given that each has its own flow and flavour. For someone who might not be able to separate the glyphs on an ‘a’ from a ‘g’, that’s massively helpful. The typography is also spacious, giving readers the chance to distinguish the letters. There’s a reason why it’s so often used in schools - it’s easy to read! 

In terms of literal accessibility, Comic Sans is the best of the bunch for mainstream typefaces. It’s more widely available than dyslexia-specific fonts such as Dyslexie and OpenDyslexic - if you’re using someone else’s computer, or you’ve installed a new programme that requires you to input copy, then you can rest assured that Comic Sans is coming along for the party. 

The Readability Group actually just released the results of an accessibility survey it carried out this February. With almost 400,000 data points from more than 2,500 respondents, one of the main takeaways was fairly simple: design for characteristics, not conditions. Because it's not just the 10% of the population with dyslexia who struggle with reading. Between 2009 and 2012, more than 8 million UK adults were described as having ‘poor’ literacy skills - accessible design has to work for them, too. 

Cutting out Comic Sans limits your creative’s commercial potential, too. One in five people across the UK have a disability, and their spending power is what’s often referred to as ‘The Purple Pound’. That equates to an annual splurge of £249 billion, which is no small number to even the richest bean-counter.

This isn’t a call for the culling of all other fonts sans-Sans, but a moment to reconsider. A chance to look at the way you’re presenting your work and seeing if you can frame it differently. Does your banner ad really have to be in ye-olde typeface, especially given that it’s to promote an energy drink? Does your font absolutely have to be red on a black background? Do you HAVE to use italics? (Notoriously difficult for those with dyslexia to read, in some cases.)

That’s why I want to make Comic Sans available everywhere. Everyone can do better. I can do better. Just think of how much smoother the digital experience of an app would become if Comic Sans options were built in, similar to something like Plain Text Mode. 

This doesn’t mean a Comic Sans takeover is the only way to be an inclusive company. That’s not the message at all. However, giving people the option opens up so many more doors at little expense to the bouncer - a banking app, a tax form, an online food delivery, a coronavirus vaccine booking could potentially be improved with just the offer of this funny old text. 

Perhaps giving people the option might not seem important to decision makers, but for those at the user end of the stick, it’s the difference between an accessible and inaccessible experience. Beyond anything to do with commercial performance and profit, just considering the legibility and visual accessibility of your work can make the world work better for everyone.

And if that means offering a typeface some people might deem ‘silly’... well, I’d rather be silly.