In September 2020, we held a training session with the staff of Miyoshi Town, which uses Morisawa's UD fonts throughout the town.

Last year, Miyoshi Town and Morisawa signed an agreement on the use of Universal Design fonts, and immediately began work to change the fonts used in internal documents and other documents to Universal Design fonts.

This year, we have introducedUD Font Plan for Public OrganizationsWe provided training on how to use this information to make it more easily understandable.

The training was divided into two halves. In the first half, participants who are already using UD fonts were given the opportunity to review the knowledge they need to know about UD fonts when using them in their actual work.

I would like to explain how to utilize the 43 UD fonts and the social background behind how UD fonts came to be used.

In the second half, we talked about how to make full use of UD fonts to create documents that are easy to understand, and what points to be careful about when creating documents for office applications such as Word and PowerPoint.
We explained the key points regarding layout for creating information content that "communicates."

↑ Samples of layouts that need improvement were distributed and the staff members who attended the course had time to discuss ways to improve them.

Participants came from various departments within the Miyoshi Town Hall, and the survey

• I am working to promote the use of My Number cards, and since the target audience is people of all ages, this was very helpful.
• I am currently explaining somewhat difficult topics such as nursing care insurance to elderly people, so I would like to use the UD fonts I learned this time to make it easier to understand.
  
• This was helpful when creating our monthly newsletter. I always consider readability, but I was always struggling to fit in as much text as possible, so I'd like to use this in the future.
  
• It seems like it would be very useful when creating flyers for a business or notices to display inside the building.
  
• I felt that there were many situations where I could use the know-how I learned in this training, such as in the notices I sent to residents.
  
• I would like to use this in school newsletters and posters.
  
• It was helpful in learning how to use fonts and margins when creating letters for children.

We received feedback that showed us that there are many different ways to use it!

Mr. Kobayashi from the Public Relations Department, who planned the training, said:

"It was impressive to see the staff taking the course seriously (even though it was a sleepy time of day).
We shared the materials from the day with those who were unable to attend the training, and they responded with comments such as "The materials were easy to read" and "I learned a lot," which suggests that there was interest in this UD font training throughout the agency.
After signing the agreement, UD fonts have become a commonplace practice, but through the training, I believe the staff realized that design and layout are also important in creating information that is easy to understand.

"We plan to continue providing training in the future, and hope to deepen the understanding of UD fonts and design among many employees, leading to a bottom-up approach within the agency. It is also important to put what you learn in training into action, rather than just using it as a temporary experience, so I hope each and every employee will take on the challenge of creating content that is easy to understand," he commented.
I'm really looking forward to seeing what kind of content the participants of this training will create in the future! As a lecturer, I would love to talk to those who have created the content and help them improve it.

Additionally, during this training, we asked participants to cooperate with a survey on the reading speed of text using UD fonts. We plan to report the results on the FONT SWITCH PROJECT website once they are compiled!