Everybody loves a bookshop, don't they? The smell of the books, the fresh new worlds to explore, the opportunity to buy yourself yet another copy of The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings because hey, this one had a dragon on the front! ...Don't judge us.
But books on the Hill in Clevedon, Somerset, isn’t your average bookshop. As well as stocking bestsellers, children’s stories and a whole host of exciting titles, they’re also thinking about text accessibility in a truly commendable way – which could be music to the ears of any avid reader who has dyslexia.
Alistair Sims, who runs Books on the Hill, has dyslexia himself and is hoping to crowdfund the resources to create Open Dyslexia – a series of titles optimised for adults with dyslexia.
It’s their aim to publish six to eight books in a dyslexia-friendly format. Using an easy-to-read font and spacing structure can streamline and support many people with dyslexia’s reading experience, by making it much easier to engage with the text than traditional paperback formatting with serif fonts, tight lines and brilliant white pages.
Mr. Sims has identified titles by classic novelists and up-and-coming local authors, and aims to build on the work that publishers like Barrington Stoke have done in creating many dyslexia-friendly books for children and young people. Speaking with BBC Somerset, he says that by creating a line of publications specifically optimised for adults with dyslexia, he hopes to put pay to the idea that some publishers might have that adults with dyslexia simply don’t want to read.
You can find out more at the Open Dyslexia Kickstarter Page, and read more about Alistair and his mission at BBC Somerset and Books on the Hill.