Luciole
Luciole (French for “firefly”) is a new typeface developed explicitly for visually impaired people. The result of a two-year collaboration between the Centre Technique Régional pour la Déficience Visuelle (the Regional Technical Center for Visual Impairment) and the type-design studio typographies.fr, this project received a grant from the Swiss Ceres Foundation and support from the DIPHE laboratory at the Université Lumière Lyon 2.
A powerful editorial tool
Each style of Luciole contains over seven hundred characters and supports almost all European languages. The character set also includes many Greek and mathematical symbols for scientific notation. Luciole aims to facilitate both optimal readability for visually impaired students and efficient deployment by publishing professionals.
The Luciole font is now used by specialized reference publishers but also by transcribers, teachers, developers.
Character Set
A typeface to advance research
As a result of this project, three reading tests based studies have been carried out with visually impaired students or adults:
− In the DIPHE laboratory, University Lumière Lyon 2 [study completed, published]
− In the CTRDV's ophthalmological assessment [study completed]
− As part of the ISTR's graduation project, Department of Orthoptics, University Lyon 1 [study completed]
These three studies reveal a preference of visually impaired readers in favor of Luciole.
Download the typeface
Luciole is available for download under a Creative Commons Attribution license., which covers use (including commercial use) and distribution of the typeface for free. Simply download the fonts and move the files to the appropriate Fonts folder on your computer.
To install in MS Windows: copy the files to C:\Windows\Fonts, and then restart.To install on Apple Mac: copy the files to Library\Fonts, and then restart.
To install on Linux: download, double-click on each file and then click on install.
You can download webfonts for web designers and developers here.
Luciole is supported by most ebook readers.
Contact us for further information or specific file format.
Project team
- Coordination: Carole Malet and Jonathan Fabreguettes
- Ophthalmologist: Dr Florence de Saint-Étienne
- Orthoptist: Anne-Céline Blanc
- Psychologist: Véronique Morra
- Typeface designer: Laurent Bourcellier
- Transcriber: Jonathan Fabreguettes
- Researchers: Anna-Rita Galiano (PhD) and Nicolas Baltenneck (PhD)
- Students: Gaétane Hurstel, Camille Benas, Gaëlle Bonnesseur,
Hind Drissi and Vanessa Augereau-Depoix