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TIL British Columbia created a font to support Indigenous languages (www2.gov.bc.ca)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Via the A11yTalks webinar Accessibility in Action: Indigenous Communities by Meggan Van Harten

Link to font:https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/governments/services-for-government/policies-procedures/bc-visual-identity/bc-sans

Several typefaces were examined that matched the criteria and a handful of these were tested. Noto Sans stood out as an option as it already had an extensive set of characters supporting over 800 languages, including many Indigenous languages in Canada. The typeface was also originally designed for enhanced readability on-screen.

Under an open-font license, Noto Sans presented the opportunity to access the font files and modify and improve its character sets. With expertise from a typographic Indigenous language expert, and from FirstVoices (an initiative of the First Peoples’ Cultural Council), additional characters and syllabic glyphs were added to support Indigenous languages in B.C. This new typeface was named BC Sans and first launched in 2019.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Wow, I'm pretty impressed with BC for this.

Having font support really legitimizes a language. It's basically impossible to make digital content if you can't type in your language, so this is really unlocking a lot for the readers and writers of all those languages!