Blog
Notes on dyslexia-friendly typography, reading research, and making the web easier to read.
Comparing the three most popular read-later apps on font choice, letter spacing, background colours, and PDF support — plus the gap none of them fills for live web reading.
Grammarly, LanguageTool, Ghotit, Word's built-in checker — compared honestly for the errors dyslexic writers actually make: phonetic misspellings, homophones, and real-word swaps.
Installed a font extension but it stops working on Figma, your bank, or PDFs? Here's why canvas text, cross-origin iframes, and CSS specificity block overrides — and the practical fixes for each.
Prescription labels use 6-point type, all-caps drug names, Latin abbreviations, and low contrast. Here is how to reduce misread risk at home, and how to make online pharmacy and health sites readable.
Zoom's default captions scroll too fast, the chat font is too small, and shared screens are out of your control. Here is how to fix each problem step by step — and how to work with transcripts afterwards.
Kindle Immersion Reading, Apple Books read-aloud, and Learning Ally all pair highlighted text with spoken audio. Here is who this technique genuinely helps, who may find it counterproductive, and how to extend it to any website.
TTS and specialist fonts solve different parts of the reading problem. Here is what each one actually does, what the research says, and how to decide which to reach for — or whether to use both.
Google Fonts hosts over 1,500 typefaces but only a handful work well for dyslexic readers. This guide covers Lexend, Atkinson Hyperlegible Next, Andika, and others — with honest verdicts and a list of fonts to avoid.
Scroll effects, carousels, and animated headlines can derail dyslexic readers. Here is why motion disrupts reading — and how to reduce it in Chrome and across your OS.
Dense tickets, nested comments, sprawling wiki pages. Font overrides, layout tweaks, and workflow habits that make Atlassian tools readable when you have dyslexia.
How to install OpenDyslexic, Lexend, or Atkinson Hyperlegible in LibreOffice Writer, configure line spacing and page background colour, and save a reusable template for every new document.
Night Shift, f.lux, and Night Light warm your screen's colour temperature. Do they actually reduce visual stress for dyslexic readers? An evidence-first look at what warm screens can — and cannot — do.
The iOS accessibility settings, Safari Reader features, and reading apps that make iPhones and iPads genuinely easier for dyslexic readers — a practical step-by-step setup.
Roboto, Inter, and system-ui cover most of the web. None was designed with dyslexia in mind. Here's where each font falls short for dyslexic readers — and what to use instead.
Font size, bold text, dark theme, Chrome text scaling, Firefox extensions, and the best reading apps with genuine font control — a practical setup guide for Android users with dyslexia.
Immersive Reader is built into Word, OneNote, Outlook, Teams, and Edge. Here's what each setting actually does for dyslexic readers, what to configure first, and where the tool falls short.
A Chrome profile carries your font overrides, zoom levels, and extensions to every device you sign in to. Configure once, and your dyslexia-friendly reading environment follows you everywhere.
VitalSource, Kindle Textbook Edition, and Google Play Books each offer different levels of font and spacing control. Here's what dyslexic readers can actually change on each platform — and how to override the rest in a browser.
Many dyslexic readers prefer paper. The reasons are real - no scroll, no emitted light, better spatial anchoring. But screens offer something print cannot: full font and spacing control. A research-grounded look at when each format wins and how to close the gap.
Two-column PDFs, newspapers, and magazine layouts impose a specific tracking demand that interacts badly with dyslexia. Here's the eye-movement research behind it — and practical strategies for converting multi-column documents into something readable.
Eight hours of monospaced code is its own reading load. A practical guide to fonts, line height, letter spacing, themes, and extensions that make VS Code easier for dyslexic developers.
Line height and letter spacing have stronger research behind them than almost any other typographic variable. A practical guide to the Zorzi 2012 findings, the BDA recommendations, and the exact CSS values worth trying in your browser today.
Calibre can override any EPUB font with Atkinson Hyperlegible or Lexend. The Kindle desktop app now includes OpenDyslexic. Browser-based readers work with LexiFont. A practical guide to every laptop ebook option.
Apple Books offers eight or nine font choices and four background colours, but no OpenDyslexic, Lexend, or Atkinson Hyperlegible. A practical guide to the best available fonts and the settings that matter more than the font itself.
Bank statements, tax forms, and insurance policies use tiny fonts, dense tables, and walls of legal text. Practical strategies and tools for dyslexic readers to get through financial documents without errors.
Search results pages mix ads, snippets, mid-sentence keyword bolding, and knowledge panels into one dense screen. A practical guide to font overrides, ad blockers, Verbatim mode, and keyboard navigation that convert Google into a far more readable experience.
Font overrides can't touch text baked into images — infographics, scanned PDFs, screenshots. A practical guide to Google Lens, AI tools, and dedicated OCR extensions that extract and reformat image text for dyslexic readers.
Ctrl+Plus is the first tool most dyslexic readers reach for. But zoom at 150% can break layouts, hide menus, and create horizontal scrolling. A practical guide to when zoom helps, when it hurts, and what to combine it with.
Product descriptions, bullet-point specs, and customer reviews are some of the hardest reading on the web. Practical fixes for dyslexic shoppers — fonts, strategies, and a one-time browser setup that works across every retailer.
What to ask HR for, and what you can set up yourself today - browser font overrides, text-to-speech, email spacing, dictation, and how to have the accommodation conversation without oversharing.
Price comparison tables, timetables, government statistics - data grids are among the hardest reading formats for dyslexic readers. A practical breakdown of why row tracking and column drift cause problems, and what you can do in your browser right now.
Government portals, checkout flows, and medical intake forms are some of the hardest reading tasks for dyslexic adults. A practical guide to font overrides, autofill, draft-and-paste, and the audio CAPTCHA route that most people never find.
Patient portals, NHS pages, WebMD, drug leaflets — health sites are some of the hardest text to read with dyslexia. A practical guide to font choices, browser settings, and reading strategies that reduce both effort and error.
OpenDyslexic Mono brings the font's weighted-bottom letter shapes to code editors and terminals. A grounded look at what it actually solves, where it falls short, and how it compares to Fira Code and JetBrains Mono for dyslexic developers.
Audiobooks bypass the decoding step that makes dyslexia exhausting — but they're not always the right format. A clear-eyed guide to when to listen, when to read, and how to combine both for the content that benefits most.
AI text simplifiers, dictation tools, and grammar checkers each attack a different piece of the reading and writing burden for people with dyslexia. A grounded look at what each category delivers - and the gap they all leave that typography still has to fill.
Most dyslexia font research treats dyslexia as one thing. It isn't. A research-grounded look at the two main subtypes, what each one struggles with on the page, and what that means for which typeface is worth trying first.
Recipe sites are cluttered, multi-column, and full of fractions — a genuinely difficult combination for dyslexic readers. A practical guide to stripping the noise, applying a readable font, and following a method without losing your place.
Firefox gives you more low-level control over how text looks than almost any other browser. A step-by-step guide to Reader View settings, default font overrides, the about:config flag that forces your chosen font everywhere, and the best add-ons from Mozilla's store.
Edge ships with more dyslexia-relevant built-ins than any other browser: Immersive Reader, grammar tools, line focus, and Read Aloud. Here is how to actually configure them - and what they still cannot do without an extension.
Note-taking is where dyslexia hits twice: once while you read the source, and again while you re-read what you wrote. A practical comparison of how OneNote, Notion, Obsidian, and Bear handle font control, line spacing, and background colour.
Most dyslexia guides focus on fonts and colours, but your monitor's brightness, contrast mode, and colour temperature shape every word you read. A practical calibration guide — no hardware purchases required.
Kobo ships OpenDyslexic as a built-in font and offers word spacing and font weight sliders. Kindle requires sideloading but has a larger ecosystem. A practical comparison for dyslexic readers choosing between the two.
RSVP tools flash one word at a time so your eyes never move across the page. For dyslexic readers who lose their place on a line, this sounds ideal. The reality is more nuanced — and depends on where exactly your reading difficulty lives.
Breaking words into colour-coded syllable chunks targets the decoding step that most font changes don't address. Here is what the research says, which tools implement it, and when it actually helps dyslexic readers.
A reading ruler highlights one line at a time and dims the rest. For dyslexic readers who lose their place on a page, it can be a simple fix. Here's the evidence, the mechanism, and how to set one up in Chrome in under two minutes.
E-ink displays feel easier on the eyes than LCD — but is that real for dyslexic readers, or is it really about the dedicated reading context? A practical look at what e-ink does differently and which devices give you the most typographic control.
Dyslexic readers tire faster because decoding costs more mental energy per word. Here is the mechanism, and the specific font, display, and strategy changes that extend reading stamina.
Decoding words and understanding them are two different things. Here is what the research says about whether font changes like OpenDyslexic and Lexend help with both — or only one — and what that means for how you should use them.
Contracts, leases, and insurance policies stack every readability problem at once: tiny serif type, tight line spacing, justified text, and sentences that nest clause inside clause. Here is how to reformat any legal document before you read it — and when to ask for an accessible version.
Calibri has been the Office default since 2007. A close look at why it is suboptimal for dyslexic readers — condensed proportions, modest x-height, ambiguous b/d forms — and which alternatives are already on your computer.
The compensatory strategies that help dyslexic readers read faster are exactly what hide their own typos. A practical workflow — font switching, text-to-speech, backwards reading — that actually catches the errors a quick scan misses.
Verdana and Arial appear on nearly every dyslexia font checklist. But are they actually good for dyslexic readers, or just the best of what used to be pre-installed? A close look at what each font does well, where Arial falls short, and what newer alternatives offer instead.
macOS ships with more accessibility tools than most users ever find. A complete walkthrough covering Display settings, Night Shift, Spoken Content, Safari Reader mode, colour filters, and the Chrome extension layer that handles font override on every website.
MOOC platforms offer no built-in font or spacing controls, but a browser-level fix covers all of them at once. A platform-by-platform breakdown plus the settings that reduce fatigue most.
Medium's clean single-column layout is a good start, but its serif font and lack of reader controls make it harder than it needs to be for dyslexic readers. Here's how to override the fonts, spacing, and contrast in under two minutes.
How to combine Windows 11 accessibility settings, ClearType tuning, Night Light, and browser extensions to make every reading surface easier for dyslexic users.
YouTube has hidden caption settings, a dense transcript panel, and wall-of-text comments. A practical guide to making every part of YouTube easier to read with dyslexia.
A practical setup guide covering browser fonts, PDF reading, Google Docs, note-taking apps, text-to-speech, and system settings — every layer of your laptop, configured to reduce reading fatigue across a full semester.
The exact Word settings that help dyslexic readers: which fonts to install, how to set line and character spacing, how to soften the page colour, and how to use Immersive Reader and Read Aloud without hunting through menus.
Pure black on white can trigger visual stress in many dyslexic readers. What the research says about optimal contrast ratios, why softening the background helps without sacrificing accessibility, and how to test what works for you.
Which fonts to use in each presentation tool, how large to set them, and the spacing and contrast tweaks that make slides readable for dyslexic audiences — with a quick-reference settings table.
Font alone rarely adds much to raw words-per-minute scores for dyslexic readers. What the research found, which fonts were tested, and why comfort is the metric that actually compounds over time.
Wider word spacing reduces visual crowding and gives each word a cleaner boundary. What the research says, how much extra spacing actually helps, and how to apply it on any website in Chrome.
Fluorescent lights trigger visual stress in many dyslexic readers. What visual stress actually is, why high-blue-content lighting makes it worse, and the screen tints that reduce symptoms for most people.
Automatic hyphenation splits words across line ends and forces you to reassemble them mid-read. Why that taxes dyslexic readers, when it bites hardest, and how to switch it off in Chrome, Word and Google Docs.
Facebook's feed is dense, grey and locked to one font. The dark-mode and zoom settings that help, the font swap only the desktop site allows, and habits for getting through a noisy feed without re-reading.
WhatsApp locks you into a small system font on a busy chat layout. The text-size and theme settings that help, and the font swap that only WhatsApp Web allows - plus habits for keeping up with busy group chats.
Teams crams real-time chat, channels and threads into a tight, fixed font you cannot change. The theme, the comfy density setting, and the font swap that make Microsoft Teams readable with dyslexia - plus why the web app beats the desktop app.
Slanted type tilts the letters, thins the strokes and tightens the spacing - undoing several of the things dyslexic readers rely on. When italics still earn their place, and how to flatten an italic-heavy page back to upright text in Chrome.
Uppercase strips out the ascenders and descenders that give each word its recognisable shape, so dyslexic readers fall back on slower letter-by-letter decoding. Where caps still earn their place, and how to turn shouty pages back into readable text in the browser.
Stack Overflow stacks dense prose and code blocks on every answer, usually read in a hurry while something is broken. The dark mode, page zoom and reading habits that help - plus the font swap on the prose that the site will not do for you, with code left in monospace.
Outlook's tight defaults, stretched reading pane and mixed font stack are hard on dyslexic eyes. The built-in settings that help - spacing, reading pane width, Immersive Reader - plus the Chrome font override that makes every received message readable in one go.
The width of a text column is one of the cheapest reading fixes and one of the least discussed. Long lines force a long return jump to the next row, where dyslexic readers most often lose their place. The research points to 60-70 characters per line, and here is how to get there on any site.
A grid of dense numbers is close to a worst case for a dyslexic reader - context-free digits, two-axis tracking and cramped defaults. A practical setup for Sheets and Excel: the font that keeps digits distinct, room for the rows to breathe, banding to carry your eye, and reading critical numbers back to catch silent errors.
Digits are where a misread does the most damage - a wrong code, a wrong total, a wrong phone number. Why numbers get confused and transposed, the homoglyphs that cause it (0 vs O, 1 vs l), and the fonts and figure styles that make them clearer.
GitHub stacks three kinds of text on one page - prose, code and diffs - and each taxes a dyslexic reader differently. The appearance and accessibility settings that help, plus the fix GitHub hides: a font swap for the prose, with code left in the monospace it needs.
Discord is dark, dense and fast - the three things dyslexia makes expensive. A practical setup - the appearance settings most people never open, a font swap the app will not do for you, and a quieter feed - that turns a wall of grey messages into something you can sit with.
X-height is the height of the lowercase letters, and it quietly decides whether a font feels readable or exhausting. A generous one makes text look bigger without changing the size - but push it too far and the ascenders and descenders shrink, flattening the word shapes dyslexic readers lean on. Where the sweet spot sits, and how to land on it.
A Chromebook is a browser with a lid, which makes it the easiest computer to bend toward a dyslexic reader - and the one most likely to be handed to a student who needs it. The ChromeOS display settings, Chrome's Reading Mode, Select-to-speak, and the font swap that does the most work, in the order that buys the biggest comfort gain for the least fiddling.
X, still Twitter to most of the people who read it, is built for the kind of reading dyslexia makes expensive - hundreds of short, unconnected bursts of text at speed. A practical recipe - a font swap the app will not do for you, bigger type, the Following tab, Lists and dark mode - that turns the firehose into something you can sit with.
Mixing up b and d is not "seeing letters backwards" - it is a quirk of how the brain recognises shapes regardless of orientation. Why b, d, p and q are the four troublemakers, what a disambiguating font can and cannot fix, and the spacing and size tweaks that matter as much as the typeface.
Substack quietly became one of the longest-form reading surfaces on the web - a typical essay runs three to six thousand words. The defaults are above average, but not actively helping a dyslexic reader. A practical recipe - font swap, column width, dark mode, the Inbox view instead of email, footnote habits and a mobile fallback - that turns long essays into something you can sit with.
Reddit is one of the longest-read sites on the web - and one of the harder ones for a dyslexic adult. A practical recipe - opt out of the redesign, an old.reddit habit, a font swap the site will not do for you, Night Mode, collapsed comment chains, Multireddits and a separate mobile workflow - that turns the firehose into something you can sit with.
Notion is a docs tool, a wiki and a database all at once - and the defaults punish dyslexic eyes. A practical recipe - font swap, page width, dark mode, a calmer sidebar and a workspace shape that does not fight you - that turns Notion into a tool you can sit with for hours instead of minutes.
AI chatbots are quietly the longest single body of reading most adults now do on the web, and the chat frame works against the long-form content the model produces. A practical recipe - the settings most people skip, a font swap for the web app, a one-line custom instruction that reshapes every reply, and a TTS pairing - that makes ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini comfortably readable.
Slack's typography is competent; the cadence around it is brutal. A practical recipe - the accessibility settings most people skip, a low-noise sidebar, a browser-tab font swap that the desktop app cannot do, a threads-first reading order, and a pull-don't-push notification schedule - that turns Slack from a firehose into a workplace tool you can sit with.
Two weighted-bottom typefaces designed for dyslexic readers. One charges seventy euros a year, the other is free under an open licence. They share a design philosophy, share roughly the same research profile - mostly skeptical - and the honest verdict is shorter than the marketing would like. Where the paid one is genuinely worth it, where it is not, and the spacing tweak that matters more than either font.
Modern variable fonts ship a continuous range of weights, widths and optical sizes inside a single file. For dyslexic readers, that small technical change matters more than it sounds - the right comfort weight is rarely 400 or 700, and the slider lets you land on whatever actually works. A practical guide to the axes that matter, the fonts worth knowing, and how to find your personal setting.
LinkedIn is one of the harder reading surfaces on the web - not because of its typography but because of how its writers behave on top of it. A practical recipe - dark mode, the Recent feed sort, aggressive unfollowing, a font-override extension, Reader Mode for long posts, and a bullets-first job-search workflow - that turns LinkedIn from a broetry headache into something you can sit with.
Most dyslexic adults gave up on TTS years ago because the voices were robotic and the controls clunky. Neither is true any more. A practical Chrome setup - the built-in Read aloud most people miss, the three commercial extensions worth installing, and the listen-while-you-read combo that pairs TTS with a dyslexia font.
Two-column PDFs in 10pt Times New Roman, justified to ragged rivers, broken up with superscript citations and unfamiliar terminology. A six-step workflow - reflow, font swap, single-column it, anchor on structure, skip citations on the first pass, recover - that turns "I bounced off" into "I got through it."
Wikipedia is the longest single body of reading most people do on the web, and its defaults are not built for dyslexic eyes. A five-minute recipe - the Vector 2022 Appearance menu, the right account preferences, a font-override extension on top, and a separate mobile setup - turns any article into something you can sit with.
A working checklist for designers and developers - typography, layout, colour, motion, forms - that focuses on the smallest set of choices that actually helps dyslexic readers. Print the two-minute version, ship the rest in an afternoon, and stop fighting the user's own font extension.
Times New Roman is the default for academic papers, legal contracts and most Word documents - and it is one of the harder faces for dyslexic adults to read. Here is exactly which design decisions get in the way, and the per-surface swaps that fix it in Word, Google Docs, PDFs and the browser.
Subtitles flicker on a moving background in a thin sans-serif you cannot meaningfully change. Here is the service-by-service recipe - Netflix, YouTube, Disney+, Prime Video, Apple TV+, Max, VLC - that actually helps dyslexic viewers, with the one setting that beats every font tweak.
There is no single best font for a child with dyslexia, because reading itself is not a single skill. An age-staged guide - emerging readers, decoders, reading-to-learn, independent teens - with the fonts, sizes, and spacings that fit each stage, and an honest take on when OpenDyslexic helps and when it gets in the way.
Most dyslexia-reading advice assumes a desktop browser. The phone is where most reading actually happens, and the operating system - not the browser - controls most of the levers. Here are the iOS and Android settings that genuinely help, in order, plus the ones that sound useful but mostly are not.
Most dyslexia-font advice is written for screens. Paper is a different reading environment: different resolution, different ink behaviour, no glare, no adjustability. Here is which typefaces actually work in print, why OpenDyslexic can be harder on paper than on screen, and how to set up a printed page that reads kindly.
If reading drains you faster than it drains other people, working memory is usually the reason - not focus or willpower. Here is how dyslexia loads the cognitive system page by page, why fatigue compounds, and the practical typographic fixes that buy back capacity.
Justified text creates rivers of white space and uneven word spacing that drag a dyslexic reader's eye off the line. Left-aligned keeps a steady rhythm. Here is the research, the trade-offs, and how to flip any site - browser, Kindle, Word, Google Docs - to left-aligned in one click.
A 5000-word piece in The Atlantic, a long-form profile, a 40-page work PDF - they all turn into a project past about 1500 words. Here is the six-step workflow that gets you through long-form reading without bouncing off it: strip the page, set typography, set surface, anchor structure, pace, recover.
Most dyslexia-font advice quietly assumes one language, and that language is English. Here is what changes when you read in two languages every day - Latin plus Cyrillic, Italian plus English, Arabic plus anything - and the practical font picks that hold up across scripts.
News sites are some of the most hostile pages on the web for dyslexic readers. Here is the layered, six-step recipe - font, size, reader mode, background, spacing, motion - that turns BBC, NYT, Guardian and the rest into a comfortable read in under a minute.
Skipped lines, re-reading the same sentence, finger on the page. Eye-tracking research explains why dyslexic readers lose their place - and the column width, line height and tracking aids that quietly fix most of it.
Sassoon Primary was designed by watching children read. Here is what makes it work for young dyslexic readers, where it falls short, and how to pair it with the spacing, size, and background that actually do the heavy lifting.
Which Kindle font is best for dyslexia, and which settings actually matter more than the font? A practical, research-first walk through Bookerly, OpenDyslexic, Amazon Ember and the rest - plus the size, spacing and boldness recipe to try tonight.
BeeLine Reader colours each line with a smooth gradient that pulls your eye to the next line. Bionic Reading bolds the start of every word. Two very different fixes for two very different problems - here is how to pick.
Chrome's PDF viewer cannot reflow or restyle, which is why most font-override tools do nothing on PDFs. Here is the practical workflow - tweak, extract, reflow - that turns most PDFs into comfortable, dyslexia-friendly reads.
Google Docs is the longest text most adults read each week, on a surface tuned for the average reader. Here's the practical, dyslexia-friendly setup - fonts, spacing, page colour, defaults - in the order to apply it.
Monospace fonts make code line up - but they also make 0/O, 1/l/I, and ;/: blur together. A practical guide to coding fonts and IDE settings for dyslexic developers.
Gmail's defaults are hard work for dyslexic eyes - dense, narrow, low contrast. Here is the exact set of built-in settings and Chrome tweaks that fix it, in the order to apply them.
Chrome's reader mode strips a page to plain text. Reading extensions like LexiFont change the font, spacing and colours instead. For dyslexic readers, the right choice depends on what is actually slowing you down.
Off-white, pale blue, soft grey, mint - which background colour actually helps dyslexic readers? A research-first guide with the exact hex values to try in Chrome.
Bold often feels easier to read at first glance. For dyslexic readers, the picture is more complex - here's what font weight actually does for legibility, and the settings worth trying.
The right font size for dyslexic adults isn't simply "bigger." Here's what the research recommends, why over-sizing backfires, and the exact settings to try in your browser.
The standard advice is "use sans-serif." The evidence is more nuanced - the variables that actually drive readability sit one layer deeper than the serif/sans distinction. A research-first answer.
Dark mode is often pitched as kinder for dyslexic eyes. The research is more nuanced - here's what inverted contrast actually does for reading, and how to set it up well in Chrome.
Bionic Reading bolds the first syllables of every word. OpenDyslexic redraws the letters themselves. They target different problems, and the evidence behind each is very different. A head-to-head, research-first comparison.
A ranked, evidence-led review of the five fonts most often recommended for dyslexic readers — OpenDyslexic, Lexend, Atkinson Hyperlegible, Comic Neue, and Sassoon Primary.
Five ways to override website fonts in Chrome — built-in settings, zoom, DevTools, Stylus user stylesheets, and dedicated accessibility extensions — compared.
Typography tweaks, reading rulers, tinted overlays, bionic reading, reader mode — an honest verdict on each, based on what the research and readers report.
What Irlen syndrome (visual stress) is, why paper overlays don't translate to monitors, and how to test screen tints in a browser.
Google's Lexend targets reading speed. The Braille Institute's Atkinson Hyperlegible targets character disambiguation. Here's how to choose — or use both.
Two opposite approaches to dyslexia-friendly reading. Here's how they compare, what the research says, and which one to try first.
How weighted letter bottoms help some dyslexic readers, and the right way to enable OpenDyslexic on every website.
Google's Lexend is built around reading-speed research. Here's what that research actually found — and how to try Lexend on every site.
The Braille Institute designed Atkinson Hyperlegible to disambiguate characters like 0 vs O, a vs o, I vs l. Here's how to use it as your default reading font.
The anecdotal love for Comic Sans among dyslexic readers has some basis. Here's what the research says — and why Comic Neue is probably a better choice.
