Best Fonts and Text Formatting for Dyslexia

There's a lot of confident-sounding advice online about the single best font for dyslexia. The honest picture is more mixed: formatting choices genuinely help, but the research on dedicated "dyslexia fonts" specifically is weaker than most people assume, and what helps varies from person to person. Here's what's actually well-supported, and where the evidence runs out.

Sans-serif, and avoid anything too decorative

Sans-serif fonts (no small strokes at the ends of letters) are generally easier to read on screen than serif fonts, and this holds for most readers, not just dyslexic ones. The bigger win is simply avoiding decorative or overly stylised fonts — anything that makes individual letters harder to distinguish at a glance works against you regardless of dyslexia.

Increase line spacing and letter spacing

This has some of the strongest evidence behind it. Extra space between lines (1.5x line height or more) and slightly increased letter spacing reduces visual crowding — where nearby letters and lines interfere with each other as the eye tracks across text. This is often a bigger practical improvement than font choice alone.

Avoid justified text and pure white backgrounds

Justified text (stretched to align both edges) creates uneven gaps between words that can disrupt reading flow — left-aligned (ragged-right) text is easier to track. A very high-contrast pure white background can also cause visual glare for some readers; a soft off-white or light tint background is often more comfortable, though this varies by person and is worth testing rather than assuming.

What about OpenDyslexic and other "dyslexia fonts"?

OpenDyslexic and similar fonts weight the bottom of each letter to try to prevent letters being read upside down or flipped. It's a reasonable idea, but the research evidence is genuinely mixed — several controlled studies have found no reading-speed or accuracy benefit over a standard sans-serif font once spacing is controlled for, while some readers report a strong personal preference for it anyway. The honest takeaway: it's worth trying since it's low-cost and some people do prefer it, but treat it as a personal preference to test, not a guaranteed fix — spacing, size, and contrast matter more consistently across the research.

Font size and line length

Larger text (18px+ for body text) reduces strain generally. Shorter line lengths — roughly 50-75 characters per line — are easier to track than very wide columns of text, since the eye has less distance to travel back to the start of the next line.

Where a tool like DyslexiaWrite fits in

DyslexiaWrite's reading modes let you adjust font, size, spacing, and colour tint directly, and switch between a Supported mode (reading ruler, colour tint, extra spacing) and a cleaner mode once you know what works for you — since, as above, the right formatting genuinely is personal rather than one-size-fits-all.