Dyslexia Font and Accessible Fonts: What Really Helps Reading

What Is a Dyslexia Font?

A dyslexia friendly font tries to stop letters from looking alike or flipping in the mind. Common design ideas are:

• Heavier bottoms on letters, so b, d, p and q feel "anchored" and harder to mix up.
• Different shapes for look-alike letters, like a b that is not just a mirror of d.
• Wider spacing between letters and words so they do not crowd together.
• Larger x-height (taller lowercase letters) and clear, open shapes.

OpenDyslexic is free and open source, and you can get it from the official site at opendyslexic.org. Dyslexie is a commercial font with its own licence, so buy it from its official website if you want it.

Do Dyslexia Fonts Work? What Readers Should Know

This is the honest answer: research on special dyslexia fonts is mixed. Some readers find them helpful and more relaxing, while studies have generally not shown a clear, large benefit for everyone. A plain, well-spaced sans serif font often works just as well.

So treat a dyslexic font as a personal choice, not a cure. If it makes reading feel easier for you, use it. If not, these changes often help more:

• Make text bigger.
• Add more space between lines and letters.
• Keep lines short.
• Use plain left-aligned text, not justified text with uneven gaps.
• Use calm, high-contrast colours, and try a soft cream background instead of bright white.

Best Fonts for Dyslexia and Recommended Accessible Fonts

If you ask which fonts are recommended fonts for dyslexia and general readability, these names come up most. The best dyslexia fonts are the ones that feel calm and clear to you:

• Atkinson Hyperlegible: made by the Braille Institute for low-vision readers. Letters like I, l and 1 look clearly different. It is free under the SIL Open Font License and on Google Fonts. The preview above uses it.
• Lexend: a free Google font family with several widths, made with readability in mind.
• Verdana and Tahoma: wide, open letters made for screens. They come with Windows and Mac.
• Arial and Calibri: plain sans serif fonts already on most computers. See our Arial font and Calibri font guides.
• Open Sans: a free, friendly sans serif. See Open Sans.

As a rule, the most readable fonts have simple shapes, open letters, a good x-height and no fancy curls. Script, cursive and decorative fonts are the least readable fonts for long text. Copy-paste Unicode styles from a font generator are fun for a bio, but screen readers may read them badly, so keep important info in normal text.

Accessibility Font Size, Spacing and Layout Tips

Here are common guidelines for font size for accessibility. They are starting points, not strict rules.

On websites, set sizes in CSS with relative units like rem so readers can zoom, and use line-height: 1.5;. Our fonts for paragraphs and typography guides explain body text in more detail.

Dyslexia Font in Google Docs, Kindle, iPhone and Chrome

• Google Docs: click the font menu, choose More fonts, and search for Lexend or Atkinson Hyperlegible. OpenDyslexic is not in the Google Docs list, so these are the easiest dyslexia font Google Docs options.
• Kindle: many Kindle devices and apps let you pick the font OpenDyslexic in the reading settings (the Aa menu) while reading a book.
• iPhone: you cannot change the whole system font, but you can go to Settings, Accessibility, Display and Text Size to turn on Larger Text and Bold Text. Some reading apps let you pick a font too.
• Android: go to Settings, Display, and look for Font size or Font size and style. This helps seniors and anyone who wants bigger text.
• Chrome: browser extensions exist that switch web pages to OpenDyslexic. Install only well-reviewed extensions from the official Chrome Web Store.