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Reading Notion with dyslexia
Notion is the rare piece of software you are simultaneously reading, writing, browsing and querying. For a dyslexic adult that combination is brutal at the defaults - narrow body type set in a thin sans, dense sidebars, full-width pages that scroll forever, and a database view that turns prose into a spreadsheet. None of it is fixed by goodwill. It is fixed by changing six settings, one extension and one habit. This is the setup.
Why Notion is hard before you change anything
The honest part first. Notion's typography is not bad; it is competent in the same way airport signage is competent. The body font is a sans-serif called Inter, the heading font is the same family at a heavier weight, and the line height is reasonable. None of that is the problem. The problem is the shape of the app around the text.
A typical Notion page in 2026 has three things working against a dyslexic reader at once. First, the page width defaults to a narrow column (roughly 700 pixels), which means long sentences hyphenate awkwardly across short lines and the eye has to return-sweep more often than is comfortable. Second, every page is also a database, which means you spend half your time reading prose and half reading table headers and inline tags - two different rhythms in the same window. Third, the sidebar is a tree of links in tiny type, and the tree grows the longer you use the workspace, which means there is always a wall of small text on the left of your visual field, pulling at attention.
The fix is not one big change. It is a small stack that quietly removes friction from each of the three problems.
The five-minute setup
Settings & members → My settings → Appearance: pick Dark (or Use system setting if you switch). Then Style: set it to Serif if you read body copy more than databases, or Default if you do the opposite. Mono only for code.
Page-level (top right corner of any page, the ⋯ menu): turn ON Full width for prose-heavy pages, leave it OFF for short notes. Turn ON Small text only if you are trying to fit a dashboard on one screen - it is the wrong default for reading.
Sidebar: collapse it (Ctrl+\ on Windows, Cmd+\ on Mac). You almost never need it open while reading.
That is the floor. The rest of this article is what each of those choices is actually doing and where they fall short.
Step 1 - the font setting most people skip
Notion ships three built-in fonts: Default (Inter), Serif (Lyon Text), and Mono (iA Writer Mono). The setting lives on each page, not in your account, which means most users never change it. That is the wrong default for a dyslexic adult.
The pragmatic ranking, for prose-heavy pages:
Serif first, despite the conventional wisdom. The serif Notion ships (Lyon Text) is a generous, open-counter serif designed for long-form reading. The strokes carry the eye horizontally along the baseline, which is exactly what a dyslexic reader benefits from on long lines. The case that serifs are worse for dyslexia is overstated in folklore and the research is more mixed than people remember - we covered this in serif vs sans-serif for dyslexic readers. For Notion specifically, Serif is the better default.
Default (Inter) second. Inter is a perfectly good UI sans. It is fine. It is also the same family used by the sidebar, the page tree, the database headers and the inline tags. The reason to keep it - everything looks consistent. The reason to abandon it - everything looks consistent, including the difference between body prose and database rows, which a dyslexic reader benefits from being able to feel without thinking.
Mono never for body. It is a great font for code blocks and the database "code" column type. It is not a reading font.
The honest limit of the built-in setting is that it does not let you pick an actual dyslexia font. Notion ships three fonts. None of them are OpenDyslexic, Lexend, Atkinson Hyperlegible, Comic Neue or any of the typefaces with the strongest evidence base for dyslexic reading. To get those you need the next step.
Step 2 - the font swap Notion will not do for you
Notion's web app (notion.so in your browser) honours CSS font overrides the same way any other web app does. The desktop app is the same Electron wrapper around the web app, but font overrides do not reach it - if you want OpenDyslexic, Lexend or Atkinson Hyperlegible in Notion, you have to read Notion in your browser. This is the single biggest reason a dyslexic adult should default to the browser version and only open the desktop app for offline work.
Install LexiFont, set OpenDyslexic, Lexend or Atkinson Hyperlegible as your global font, and visit notion.so. The body text, the sidebar, the database headers and the page tree all swap together. The Notion Default and Serif settings still work underneath - LexiFont overrides them at the rendering layer, so you can switch the page font for a non-dyslexic colleague to read over your shoulder and your override stays in place when they leave.
A small detail that matters more than it sounds. Notion uses the same font family for every weight, which means a dyslexia font with only a regular and bold weight (OpenDyslexic, for example) will render Notion's H1, H2, H3 and body all at the same two weights. The hierarchy collapses slightly. The fix - prefer a font with a fuller weight palette for Notion specifically. Atkinson Hyperlegible ships regular, bold and an italic. Lexend ships every weight from 100 to 900 and is the best fit if heading hierarchy matters to you.
Step 3 - page width and the "small text" trap
The page-level toggles in the ⋯ menu are Full width and Small text. The first is good for prose. The second is bad for prose. Notion offers Small text as a way to fit dashboards on one screen - it is a layout tool, not a reading tool. The "small text" mode shrinks every paragraph by roughly 14% and tightens line height proportionally. For a dyslexic reader that is exactly the wrong direction.
Recommendation - turn Full width ON globally for any page with more than three paragraphs of prose, and never turn Small text ON at all. If you need to see a dashboard at a glance, use the browser zoom (Cmd/Ctrl + minus) and revert when you are done. Browser zoom is reversible per tab; the Small text toggle persists per page and you will forget to turn it off.
Step 4 - dark mode, and which dark mode
Notion's dark mode is one of the better implementations on the modern web. The background is a true dark grey (not pure black) which keeps the page from buzzing under fluorescent light, and the body text is rendered in an off-white that holds its weight at small sizes. Dyslexic readers consistently report less fatigue in dark mode on long sessions, and we covered the contrast question in detail in does inverted contrast help.
Two caveats. First, dark mode in Notion is set in Settings & members → My settings → Appearance, not in the ⋯ menu - this catches a lot of people who look in the wrong place. Second, if you suffer from Irlen-style visual stress and want a cream or pale-yellow background rather than dark grey, Notion will not give you that natively. The fix - a browser extension that applies a page-level tint. We compared the main options in Irlen syndrome and tinted overlays.
Step 5 - the sidebar problem
The sidebar is a tree of links in tiny type, and it grows the longer you use Notion. After three months of normal use most workspaces have a sidebar that runs off the bottom of the screen, with deeply nested toggles for projects, sub-projects, archived pages and personal notes. While you read the page in the centre, the sidebar pulls at the periphery of your visual field - and for a dyslexic reader, that peripheral text is a constant cognitive cost.
The fix is brutal and correct. Collapse the sidebar (Cmd/Ctrl + \) and only open it when you actively need to navigate. When you do open it, use Quick Find (Cmd/Ctrl + P) instead of scrolling the tree - it is a typeahead search across all pages in your workspace, and finding a page by name is faster and quieter than scanning a long tree.
If you find yourself opening the sidebar constantly because you cannot remember where things are, that is a sign your workspace is too deep, not that you should leave the sidebar open. Notion workspaces flatten well; ours has nine top-level pages and almost nothing nested more than two levels deep. Quick Find does the rest.
Step 6 - databases, the rhythm break
Databases are where the typography stops being prose and starts being a spreadsheet. The Table view in Notion is essentially a small Excel embedded in your page, with column headers, row dividers and inline tags. For a dyslexic reader two different things change at once - the type gets smaller, and the visual rhythm switches from horizontal sentences to vertical columns of fragments.
Three rules that help:
First, prefer Board, Gallery or Timeline views over Table for anything you read more than once a week. Board view sets each item as a card with the title at a readable size and the metadata smaller below - much closer to the rhythm of prose than a spreadsheet row. Gallery is the same idea with bigger cards. Table is right when you genuinely need to compare many fields at once, but most "table" databases in real workspaces are actually lists pretending to be tables.
Second, when you do use Table view, hide every column you can. The defaults show everything - status, owner, deadline, tags, last updated, created by, priority - and most of it is metadata you do not read while you work. A four-column Table is much calmer than a fourteen-column one.
Third, sort by the column you actually scan. The default sort in most databases is creation date descending, which means the page reshuffles every time someone adds a new item. For a dyslexic reader the stable position of a row is part of how you find it. Sort by status, by name, or by any property that does not change every day.
Step 7 - the writing side
This is a reading guide, but Notion is also where many dyslexic adults write. Three writing-side notes that pair well with the reading setup:
Toggle headings ruthlessly. Notion's Heading 1, Heading 2 and Heading 3 blocks can be made collapsible (right-click the block, "Turn into toggle heading"). Long pages become much easier to navigate when each section folds away. For a dyslexic reader, scanning a folded outline before reading the body is closer to how the brain wants to take in long documents - we wrote up the workflow in how to read long articles with dyslexia.
Use the slash menu for callouts. The /callout block puts emphasis text in a coloured pill. For a dyslexic reader those visual breakpoints are the difference between "I parsed the whole page" and "I scanned the boxes and moved on" - and the second is fine, often better.
Voice notes on mobile. Notion's mobile app has a voice-note block that transcribes inline. For dyslexic adults who write faster than they type, this is the most underused feature in the app. Record the thought, let it transcribe, clean up the transcript later. The transcript quality is good enough that you almost never need to re-record.
What about the desktop app?
The desktop app is the same Electron wrapper around the web app, with one cost and one benefit for a dyslexic reader. The cost is that browser extensions do not reach it - no LexiFont, no Reader Mode, no tint extensions. The benefit is offline access and slightly better OS integration (drag-and-drop into the dock, native notifications).
For most dyslexic users that trade is bad. The font swap is the single biggest comfort improvement available, and it only works in the browser. Default to the web app, open the desktop app only for genuine offline work, and accept the small UX delta. Notion as a tab in Chrome is the right shape.
The Pro question
The free tier of LexiFont covers OpenDyslexic. That alone closes most of the gap with Notion's defaults - the body text, sidebar and database headers all swap together, and the reading experience is meaningfully calmer.
The case for LexiFont Pro (a one-time $14.99) is the font palette - Lexend, Atkinson Hyperlegible and Comic Neue in addition to OpenDyslexic. For Notion specifically, Lexend is the strongest of the four because its full weight range (100 through 900) lets the headings keep their visual hierarchy where OpenDyslexic flattens it. If you spend more than two hours a day in Notion and headings matter to you, Pro is worth it for Lexend alone. If you spend less, the free tier is fine.
The shorter version
Switch to Serif at the page level (Notion's Lyon Text is a generous serif). Default to Full width, never Small text. Use the browser, not the desktop app. Install LexiFont and set Lexend or Atkinson Hyperlegible as the global font. Turn on Dark mode in Settings & members. Collapse the sidebar and use Quick Find. Move prose out of Table view into Board or Gallery. Toggle long pages with collapsible headings.
Most dyslexic Notion users have the first three set right and miss the fourth. The font swap is what changes the day.
Get LexiFont Pro - OpenDyslexic, Lexend, Atkinson Hyperlegible and Comic Neue for $14.99 one-time