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Recently, SE switched to system fonts which, for many users, has caused a design problem that affects the readability and accessibility.

The new fonts seem to complement only certain browsers and operating systems, and are a setback on a lot of others, especially on Windows machines. As has been said before, the SE users all need different settings to be comfortable. I'm therefore proposing that this should be made an option in our preferences, or that the design team consider different fonts. It shouldn't be difficult, as this change hasn't affected sites with custom fonts; so please consider this.

Related posts:

  1. We are switching to system fonts on May 10, 2021
  2. Custom fonts User Script: Revert or Improve the Font Updates
  3. Vote count minus signs not readable in Segoe UI
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    or, like, just use a font that doesn't cause headaches as the default.
    – Kevin B
    Commented May 10, 2021 at 18:10
  • @user400654 yeah, that'd also help, I think.
    – Ollie
    Commented May 10, 2021 at 18:10
  • 1
    Duplicate: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/364048/…
    – Luuklag
    Commented May 10, 2021 at 18:12

1 Answer 1

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We understand this request and think that it'd be great to have some additional options for this - it serves as both a customization feature as well as an accessibility tool. We've been looking at sites that have options for this like dev.to, which has preferences for several font faces including serif/sans-serif, Open Dyslexic and Comic Sans (why???) - we don't have any plans to implement this in the near term and we're not sure when we'd be able to work on it.

We probably won't do exactly this but, for anyone who doesn't have an account on their site, here's what their settings page looks like:

Screenshot of dev.to's user settings page with options for different site themes, font choices, and navigation bar. Base reading font choices include serif, sans serif, monospace, comic sans, and open dyslexic

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  • For people with more serious dyslexia - comic sans is ironically enough, the most 'common' accessible fonts - and I guess it lets them keep a consistent font across things. Its interesting to have that and open dyslexic as options - as the fill the same niches. I believe Aaron also mentioned the "sans" family of fonts in the comments for the font change post, which, advertently or inadvertently has a lot of dyslexic friendly features.
    – Journeyman Geek Mod
    Commented May 11, 2021 at 4:21
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    This answer is not helpful. The necessity to customize the working earlier site with user scripts (in which unfortunately I don't understand even a bit) after updates is really frustrating. I really hope the next change will take such a horrible "font update" experience in account. For me it's a critical point, I am basically seriously considering to leave this community because of devs behavior.
    – Sinatr
    Commented May 27, 2021 at 14:03

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