We are pleased to announce that markbatesltd.com is now set in Atkinson Hyperlegible, a typeface developed by the Braille Institute to make reading easier for people with low vision. It has replaced the previous font on every page of the website, including the quote journey, the help centre and the customer account area, and it is live now. Accessibility is for everyone, and this font makes it easier for us all to see things clearly.

Atkinson Hyperlegible was designed in 2019 to make each letter and number as unmistakable as possible. The characters that readers most often confuse have been given shapes that cannot be taken for one another, so a capital I, a lower case l and a number 1 all look different. A 0 is never a letter O, and a B is never an 8. The openings inside letters such as e, a and s are kept wide so they stay clear at small sizes and on older or cheaper screens, and letters that mirror each other, such as p and q, have been drawn so that each is recognisable on its own.

The font won Fast Company's Innovation by Design award in the year it was released and was added to the permanent collection of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in 2024.

At Mark Bates Ltd we have always tried to make the way we communicate as clear as the cover we provide, and an increasing number of people first read about what we offer, compare the options and get a quote on our website. So instead of choosing a typeface for the way it looks, we looked at how easy it is to read.

Reading what a policy covers, checking a price, finding the right number to call, or reading a policy reference back to one of our team all depend on characters on a screen being read correctly the first time. That is true for everyone, on any device, and it matters most for the people who find small text hardest. There is nothing to download or switch on. The change is already in place on every page and we couldn't be happier with the result.

Our great reputation that customers write about on Trustpilot is built on a great many small things done properly. This is one of them but not the end of our work. We will carry on looking at the way our website, our documents and our letters are presented, and where there is a clearer way to do something we will take it.