I did not add it for inherent readability, and I couldn’t tell you if one was better than the other.
I added it for familiarity. Early on, many teachers from around the world emailed stating the same thing: they teach letters with handwriting, where a small a is commonly written rounded. When printing assignments, they wanted the small a to match what they were writing to avoid confusion.
It’s was a very reasonable request, so an alternate was created.