There is an anachronistic diversity of educational typefaces in the European Union. In some countries the educational typeface is exactly defined, in other countries the teacher has a free choice. Some countries have even more than one educational typeface (e.g. Austria and Germany).
An example for the great diversity of educational typefaces is the following list of computer fonts for which licences must be obtained, in order to design educational software that is suitable for all German speaking school children in Austria and Germany:
- Lateinische Ausgangsschrift
- Schulausgangsschrift
- Vereinfachte Ausgangsschrift
- Grundschrift
- Österreichische Schulschrift 1969
- Österreichische Schulschrift 1995
- Druckschrift Hamburg
- Druckschrift Bayern 2001
- Österreichische Schuldruckschrift
This list does not take into account …
- the various educational typefaces of the German speaking Swiss,
- the educational typefaces that are necessary to also write the languages of the non-German speaking school children in Germany and Austria,
- the educational typefaces that are used by German speaking minorities in other countries of the European Union, e.g. Belgium or Poland.
At the moment you must obtain a licence for each computer font of an educational typeface. These licences are expensive, if available at all.
A software for German-speaking school children in Austria and Germany requires licences for nine educational typefaces.
If a software for German-speaking school children requires such effort and costs, one can only imagine how much more it involves to develop a software for more - or even all – European languages and countries.