What do Françoise from Vienna, Bjørn from Paris and Jürgen from London have in common?
They just learn to read and write, but with the typeface they learn at school they can hardly write their first names – let alone write in their mother tongue:
The educational typefaces which they have to use lack the required characters!
Many children in the European Union have this problem: many children with migration backgrounds or minority languages have no access to an educational typeface that would enable them to write in their mother tongue.
And what do Alexandra from Hamburg, Peter from Vienna and Barbara from Burgenland have in common?
They want to prepare educational material, but will fail when using the required fonts:
Alexandra develops software. She wants to develop a software for beginning readers, but would have to obtain at least ten licenses for educational fonts in the German-speaking area. Moreover, some of the necessary fonts have severe legibility and readability issues.
Peter works for an editor. The company wants to publish a school book for beginning readers, which should be also apt for children whose mother tongue is not German. It is, however, impossible, because the legally provided educational typeface does not have the necessary characters and the computer fonts have technical faults.
Barbara teaches in a class in Burgenland, an Austrian province with a minority of Croatian speaking children. She wants to prepare work sheets for her lessons, but cannot do so because the computer font family does not have the necessary characters and fonts.