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It’s cool to hate comic sans. But it’s also problematic.

The day my sister, Jessica, discovered Comic Sans, her entire world changed. She’s dyslexic and struggled through school until she was finally diagnosed in her early twenties, enabling her to build up a personal set of tools for navigating the written world.

“For me, being able to use Comic Sans is similar to a mobility aid, or a visual aid, or a hearing aid,” she tells me while we’re both visiting our family in Maryland. “I have other ways of writing and reading, but they’re not like they are for someone who’s not dyslexic.”

The irregular shapes of the letters in Comic Sans allow her to focus on the individual parts of words. While many fonts use repeated shapes to create different letters, such as a “p” rotated to made a “q,” Comic Sans uses few repeated shapes, creating distinct letters (although it does have a mirrored “b” and “d”). Comic Sans is one of a few typefaces recommended by influential organizations like the British Dyslexia Association and the Dyslexia Association of Ireland. Using Comic Sans has made it possible for Jessica to complete a rigorous program in marine zoology at Bangor University in Wales.

The day my sister discovered Comic Sans, her entire world changed.
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Yet despite the fact that Comic Sans is recommended for those with dyslexia, the gatekeepers of graphic-design decency routinely mock those who use it as artistically stunted and uneducated.

It turns out the ongoing joke about the idiocy of Comic Sans is ableist.

Microsoft font designer Vincent Connare created Comic Sans — based on the lettering by John Costanza in the comic book The Dark Knight Returns — to be used for speech bubbles in place of the unacceptably formal Times New Roman. The font was released in 1994.

“Comic Sans was NOT designed as a typeface but as a solution to a problem with the often overlooked part of a computer program’s interface, the typeface used to communicate the message,” Connare says on his website. “The inspiration came at the shock of seeing Times New Roman used in an inappropriate way.”

Today, Comic Sans is the font everyone loves to hate. There’s a petition to ban it from Gmail and myriad stories about how terrible it is. Even Weird Al chastises people who use Comic Sans in his music video for “Tacky.” (“Got my new résumé/it’s printed in Comic Sans.”)

A Ban Comics Sans movement began in 1999 with graphic designers Holly and David Combs. In a 2010 interview with The Guardian, Holly said, “Using Comic Sans is like turning up to a black-tie event in a clown costume.” Their manifesto states, “By banding together to eradicate this font from the face of the earth we strive to ensure that future generations will be liberated from this epidemic and never suffer this scourge that is the plague of our time.” Their website sells t-shirts for anyone who wants to drop $26 to make sure their stance on this font plague is clear.

There are other websites dedicated to ridding the world of Comic Sans as well, including a Ban Comic Sans Tumblr page and ComicSansCriminal.com. The latter frustratingly has “Alternative Dyslexia Fonts” on its nav bar, as if acknowledging that attacking Comic Sans disadvantages those who are dyslexic is enough to absolve the site of its ableism. (It is not.)

The line of thinking behind these movements is “quite elitist,” Jessica says. “It’s belittling and condescending.”

The line of thinking behind anti-Comic Sans movements is elitist, belittling, and condescending.
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I asked Jessica to tell me what she’s up against. She’s been told that Comic Sans is “unprofessional. That it’s juvenile. That it’s stupid. That it basically shouldn’t be used for anything at all, unless it is a comic.”

There are fonts that have been specifically created for people with dyslexia, all of which lack the clean minimalism or elegant balance and perfect kerning favored by typography snobs. But they are crucial disability aids. Some are free, such as Lexie Readable (which calls itself “Comic Sans for grown-ups”), Open-Dyslexic, and Dyslexie. Others are for purchase or are publisher-owned and unavailable to the general public.

But for Jessica, Comic Sans is still the best. “I don’t use Open Dyslexic because it’s not as easy for me to read,” Jessica says. “It’s not my font. I was dyslexic before Open Dyslexic happened. My mind has been getting used to Comic Sans.”

Not everyone with dyslexia uses Comic Sans to help them read and write. “Other people with dyslexia find that having colored paper makes it easier,” Jessica says. “Or some people find Arial easier.”

Comic Sans and Arial are readily available because they are included by default in many operating systems and word-processing programs, and they are web-safe fonts. A pamphlet from the office of student services at my sister’s school on accommodations for dyslexic students is printed in Comic Sans on blue paper in both English and Welsh. Other common fonts suggested by the British Dyslexia Association include Century Gothic, Verdana, Calibri, and Trebuchet. (Trebuchet was also designed by Connare.)

According to my sister, the truly villainous font is the ubiquitous Times New Roman. “I don’t know anyone [dyslexic or not] who reads Times New Roman well. It’s definitely my least favorite font.” To her, the serifs turn the text into a dense blur at small sizes. My sister tells me of a particular time Times New Roman made school unnecessarily difficult for her during a tutorial on scientific data analysis and graphing software.

The truly villainous font is the ubiquitous Times New Roman.
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“The lecturer printed out these handouts in Times New Roman. Everyone’s like, ‘Oh my god. This is so easy!’ I handed him the thing back and I was like, ‘It’s not that your instructions are difficult, I cannot read them. I’ve nearly cried three times during this.’”

Since the handout was available online, she was able to modify it into a readable format.

“What I did is I eventually downloaded the handout, blew it up to 16 point font, turned the paper green, and turned it into Comic Sans.” Then the assignment became just as easy as it was for her classmates.

Sometimes people ask Jessica why she doesn’t begin in Comic Sans and then hand in her papers in Arial or Times New Roman.

“Have you ever tried to format a scientific paper when you have to get everything lined up so specifically? You’ve got all of your legends that have to go underneath your figures. 12 points in Comic Sans is not 12 points in Arial is not 12 points in Times New Roman. You can spend hours formatting your paper in Comic Sans and then turn it into 12 point Arial and it will mess up everything.”

In addition, she cannot proofread in a font that’s difficult for her to read. “You cannot fix formatting errors you cannot see!” To her, asking her to change to a font she cannot adequately use “is the epitome of ableism.” Sometimes she can ask someone in her cohort to help her spot errors, but it’s a lot to ask. “I can and have had people in my class look over my work, but you need to understand that we’re not collaborators, they’re my peers. This is an encroachment on their time.”

Asking her to change her font is asking her to take a task that is already very difficult for someone with dyslexia and demanding that she take extra steps to please the aesthetic preferences of someone for whom reading is easy.

“If you work with someone with dyslexia, maybe even if you don’t know if they’re dyslexic, if something is laid out well, if someone has gone through the time to carefully format something, please accept it in whatever color, whatever font people want to use. You never really know what is helping someone. If it’s not hurting you, then just leave it alone.”

People without dyslexia need empathy for those who need concessions to manage the disability. “You have to think about how massive this issue is for me, and you have to think about how tiny the issue is for you.”

In summary, she says:

“Get the fuck over yourself.”

One day I woke up in a hospital bed and could not feel my face. I looked around and saw people crying all around me. I could not recognize those in the room with me, nor remember how I got there or what was happening. All that I knew was that I could not move or even speak. Then it all turned to black; I couldn’t tell you anything else from that day or that month for that matter.

I have a lot of fragmented memories like this one after being hospitalized for a large portion of my late teenage and young adult life. This was a result of sustaining a TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) among multiple other internal and external injuries stemming from a very violent act inflicted upon me by a man I did not know, but who felt entitled to ownership of my existence. Fortunately, I survived. However, navigating life as a disabled person thereafter, in an inherently ableist society, often led me to question why. Why bother? This especially became a recurring thought in my mind whenever I faced mainstream issues or experiences that excluded or denied disabled people our humanity.

The latest reiteration of normalized ableist exclusion has been the bans and debate regarding single use disposable plastic straws. Every time I come across it online, another one of these vivid memories from my life living in the hospital intensive care unit stirs up in my psyche. I remember in particular one of my friends from high school, Dini, sitting by my hospital bedside, feeding me baby food with a plastic straw that had a tiny spoon fashioned at the end of it. When I had graduated to receiving my sustenance through my mouth rather than through an IV, I had to start with liquids, ingested via regular plastic bendable straws. Eventually baby food and other blended-up food items were fed to me by these special plastic spoon-straws, provided in many hospitals to their incapacitated patients. My jaw had been wired shut for about a total of six months, and plastic straws were the only way I could eat and take my meds.

We Can’t Talk Climate Change Without Talking Environmental Racism
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Paper straws were of no use, especially for hot liquids—the paper would just disintegrate. Metal straws were not an option either, because they could lead to potentially serious burns in my already fragile mouth, face, and body from their hot content, not to mention that the metal could damage fresh surgical sites. But also, if I did not have the fine motor functions to eat or drink by myself at the time, having to clean and disinfect reusable metal straws was certainly out of the question. I tried every type of straw there was during that time period to find that only the bendy disposable plastic variety were of any use to me. This is likely the case with people suffering from ALS, dementia, stroke, seizures, or other kinds of disabilities and health issues that would require the regular use of them.

Those who want to ban plastic straws argue for these unusable alternatives, or say that disabled people should provide our own straws—at our own expense and effort. That we are expected to do this in order to maintain some modicum of a normal life is only half of the issue with this recent rendition of strawgate.

The issue of plastic straws seems to regularly cycle in the mainstream, but a recent viral video of a turtle with a plastic straw stuck in its nostril furthered the impetus for strawgate 2018. It has now resulted in real life bans and never ending ableist debates across developed cities all over the world from Vancouver to Seattle to London, regarding the impact of straws on the environment. In all of the debates and proposed or implemented policies thus far, most have failed to include the disabled community—those of us who depend on plastic straws to carry out basic functions of daily living.

In all of the debates and proposed or implemented policies thus far, most have failed to include the disabled community.
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Questioning the ableism in these sweeping bans is often met with the rhetoric of “well if you need straws, bring your own.” But when you ask a disabled person to provide their own straws, think of the equivalents. You would not ask an abled bodied person to be even mildly inconvenienced to regularly carry their own chairs and table to an eatery, or carry their own oxygen mask onto an airplane. Thus the onus to offer environmentally friendly alternatives should not fall on disabled people. If an establishment is truly committed to the environment and their clientele (because both are capable for consideration simultaneously), the responsibility to seek and offer viable and usable alternatives that also work for disabled people and not leave us excluded, is on the establishment.

Furthermore, the understanding that for many disabled people, the alternatives just don’t, won’t, and haven’t worked for us, is truly absent. Disabled people are constantly under attack, heavily scrutinized and regularly challenged about what we often already know works best for us. After all, we are the ones who’ve lived in our disabled bodies as long as we have and have likely tried the whole gamut of suggestions that any abled bodied person could ever think up—no matter how well intentioned. The reality that disabled people can be masters of our own experiences, and therefore the most experienced regarding our own life situation, seems to be amiss among those who do not share our lived experiences as disabled people. The ludicrousness of being told, expected, and even demanded repeatedly to use alternatives that we’ve likely explored and already know don’t work, is akin to a lay person instructing a cancer treatment surgeon on how and where to remove a tumor. Mastery comes from experience, and there is no greater mastery than that of lived experience.

Disability Rights Are Conspicuously Absent From The Women’s March Platform
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Every so often this uproar about plastic straws makes its way around social media and becomes yet another pop culture display in self righteous faux activism. But the actual facts surrounding ocean plastics are lost under the performative outrage about plastic straws and their environmental consequences. Straws become a false flag that distract the everyday person from real and more pressing issues about the environment, and obscures who should really be held accountable.

Plastic straws are a relatively tiny percentage of ocean plastics. Having worked for turtle conservation centers from Ceylon to the Maldives, and being an island person from indigenous cultures where our ways of living are inextricably linked to the environment that surrounds us, I’ve seen firsthand the devastation of plastics on our waters and ocean wildlife. But of all the ocean plastics that washed ashore every day, rarely were any plastic straws. Over 46% of ocean plastics are from fishing nets and gear that are disposed of or left in the ocean. But are we willing to give up on keto salmon diets or our fishing industries, or demand more stringent practices for fisheries, to end the devastation these cause to ocean wildlife?

None of the hundreds of turtles that we tried to save and nurse back to health at the conservation centers had been harmed by straws. They had either been severely injured and dismembered or killed from boating accidents. From massive luxury ocean liners, to personal boating vessels, to getting caught in the motors of small fishing boats, it was absolutely devastating to see how many turtles were regularly harmed or killed from human leisure activities. Are we willing to put a cap on human interaction with ocean life and the seas? Are we willing to dial back on ocean wildlife excursions or fishing/boating trips because of their harmful consequences on these poor animals?

I’ve seen firsthand the devastation of plastics on our waters and ocean wildlife. But of all the ocean plastics that washed ashore every day, rarely were any plastic straws.
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It is also irresponsible to place the weight and accountability of solving the ocean plastics problem onto individuals. The majority of ocean plastics are from a handful of powerful industrial conglomerates that pollute our oceans despite being warned of the consequences to their behavior since the 1970s. But so-called developed nations have not been making enough substantial, concrete, and legislative changes to seriously help the environment.  In addition to not doing enough in holding big businesses accountable for their waste, developed nations often blame developing countries as the sole contributors to our ocean plastics problem, while they quietly ship these countries their plastic waste for disposal. Countries like the United States also refuse to sign onto global conventions attempting to address this urgent issue. While individuals in the west pay more than 90% of the cost of recycling, their governments of these developed nations hand out huge subsidies to big businesses in fossil fuels—even though plastics are made out of fossil fuels.

It is indeed an overdue necessity that we clean up our oceans and find sustainable alternatives to our plastic problem, but straws that can make the difference for disabled people as a necessary accommodation are not the hill ableds should die on. We often hear “every little bit counts,” but even if every single person in this world reduced their plastic consumption drastically, it will not have ANY significant effect on our oceans. Instead of putting the onus of reducing ocean plastic waste onto an already marginalized group, why are we not holding these huge multi-billion-dollar corporations accountable for the massive amount of pollutants and plastics they’ve disposed of that are steadily obliterating our environment?

The majority of ocean plastics are from a handful of powerful industrial conglomerates that pollute our oceans.
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The inclusion of disabled people’s needs and accommodations—or even our very existence—always seems to come in the form of a hasty afterthought (and usually after much outcry from disabled communities). People rarely consider disabled people, whether in their policies or in practice within their everyday life. Nor do they consider the necessity of disability inclusion until after disability strikes them on a personal level. But disability inclusion and disability justice has to start being proactively considered and implemented, rather than relegated as a half-assed pitiful attempt after the fact.

Disabled people have value and are active members of society whether you choose to see us or not; therefore mainstream discussions about public policy and social change needs to include us in these processes. When we tell you what it is we need and the accommodations that we require, believe us. It’s not much to ask that businesses seek out and invest in viable alternatives while also keeping proven options that disabled people need available. Blanket bans don’t work in a diverse society filled with all different kinds of groups of individuals with unique needs and lived experiences, and disabled people shouldn’t be forced to draw attention to ourselves through never-ending requests that you make accommodations for us.

Maybe if disability inclusion training was normalized, this wouldn’t have to be said. But until then, I have to make these points. Blanket bans unreasonably force disabled people to advocate for special considerations about necessary and reasonable accommodations requests that should already be in place. This often results in arbitrary and inconsistent decisions reflecting often inaccurate perceptions about necessity or merit that are framed by ableist biases and assumptions, from individual staff members that may not have the knowledge, understanding, or training about disability inclusion and accommodations. It goes without saying that disability justice and inclusion training should be a staple of every establishment and public service.

We need to hold big businesses and governments accountable for their pollutants and ocean plastics waste, rather than putting the weight of environmental concern, action, and sustainability onto individuals. There is only gain from offering tried and true plastic straws to those who depend on them, and these should be offered without questions nor proof of disability. Considering the popularity of strawgate, it’s reasonable to assume that those who do not need plastic straws will not insist on having plastic straws be given to them. We need to move away from being an ableist society that demands disabled people prove our legitimacy, especially when current methods of having to legitimize ourselves are most often carried out in ways that are deeply dehumanizing and embarrassing, a breach of our privacy in a public setting, or otherwise exhausting.

Disabled people have a right to have our humanity and dignity recognized, considered, and accommodated without becoming the casualties of performative faux altruism by ableds. Ideas about accessibility should not be relegated to being a hasty afterthought out of pity, guilt, or irrational fears. Listen to what disabled people tell you we need—even if that means plastic straws.