Text Formatting ⇒ change \emph to bold, not italicize

[Anymouse]

Apparently for some dyslexic users, italicized text can trigger their dyslexia (as can small-caps, serif fonts, and justified text) but bold text doesn't have the same issue.

Research is still ongoing but it seems many reading disabilities including but not exclusively dyslexia are triggered by brain fatigue and certain typography practices that are aesthetically pleasing actually make the brain work harder, increasing fatigue making a trigger of the disability more likely and reducing reading comprehension.

When preparing a document for such a user, it's relatively easy to change to a sans-serif font and ragged-right but is there a robust way to change \emph to use bold but still have

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\emph{this has a \emph{double emphasis} inserted}

work? I know under the hood, \emph is not just an alias for \textit

I'm hoping there exists a package that does it?

[Anymouse]

This works except for double-emph

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\let\emph\relax
\DeclareTextFontCommand{\emph}{\bfseries}

[Bartman]

Reading the section "Handling of nested emphasis" in issue 31 (February 2020) in ltnews may help you.

[Anymouse]

Thank you!

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\DeclareEmphSequence{\bfseries,\mdseries}

That does it nicely.

Doesn't work as expected when used inside \textbf{} where un-modified \emph does work inside \textit{} but I can live with that.