UNICEF Ukraine continues to promote Inclusive Education and support Government in building a barrier-free learning environment for all. With this goal in mind, UNICEF Ukraine in partnership with NGO “Social Synergy” developed a new Ukrainian Cyrillic font “Inclusion UKR”.

“Inclusion UKR” was specifically designed to be convenient for a wide range of users, including children who have difficulties learning to read due to dyslexia. For reference, dyslexia is a learning disorder caused by differences in the brain that make processing and interpreting of written symbols problematic. Statistics estimates that anywhere between 10% and 20% of global population experience difficulties related to dyslexia. These difficulties present particular challenge for children as they learn to read and write.  

One of the ways to mitigate the issue and facilitate learning is using specialized typefaces/fonts. Some Latin script type fonts have long been developed and, but the need of those, who use Cyrillic script was not met for a long time. Unlike some attempts to adapt existing Latin-script solutions, “Inclusion UKR” is a fundamentally new type font created in Ukraine in close collaboration with scientists. The initial version was tested for ease and comfort of use with an impressive group of 74 children with dyslexia and their parents (cf. similar tests done internationally included groups of some 15-20 adults).

Recently, the font was rolled out and is currently used in pilot schools both mainstream and specialized. Based on feedback from teachers and a few hundred students across Ukraine with and without learning disorders, the designer and the support team of scientists make further improvements to the font.

The font was designed by Ukrainian artist, illustrator and type-designer Oleh Petrenko-Zanevsky, known to young readers and their parents for illustrations in children's books from publishing houses А-БА-БА-ГА-ЛА-МА-ГА, ВСЛ and many others. The related scientific research studies were facilitated by Romana Ivanus’ and Eliana Danilavichute.

The original version of the font consisted of letters, numbers and punctuation marks just sufficient for use in Language learning or general (non-technical) literature and offered technical formats for use in printing and web.

The current version 2.03 additionally features Latin script and an extended set of symbols. Further development of the font (including styles, letters and symbols) is under way.

Inclusion UKR will be made available for commercial use by publishers of children's, educational and other literature.

Currently, it is open for non-commercial use under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License ("Public License") CC BY-NC-SA.

For free download please use files from repository folders above (file types: .ttf, .otf, .woff, .woff2, .eot). For additional support on installing fonts, view instructions here.

 

Happy typing!