For anyone who’s ever wondered what it is like to be dyslexic, this website could help. Developer Victor Widell has created a page that’s just a little bit harder to read than most.
The letters of each word on the page are constantly shifting—a phrase like “I remember reading,” shows up as ”I reremmebed rieandg,” and then “I rreeeemmbd rnadieg,” and several other variations.
To jumble the letters of any text, check out Quartz’ dyslexia bookmarklet, made with Widell’s code.
Widell told Quartz he was inspired to build the site while at a software developer conference in October 2013. A friend with dyslexia described reading as letters “jumping around.” He built a page that did just that, publishing it on Github yesterday (Mar. 3).
The jumbled spellings on Widell’s page demonstrate “typoglycemia,” a phenomenon in which people can read words that have been misspelled, as long as the first and last letters of the words are correct. The term started as an internet meme (the word is a portmanteau of “typo” and “hypoglycemia”) based on chain emails that circulated in the early 2000s.