Do dyslexia fonts actually work?
Honest answer: special fonts like OpenDyslexic and Dyslexie show little to no measurable improvement in reading speed or accuracy in controlled research, but many kids prefer how they look, and preference alone is a fine reason to use one. That's the whole evidence picture in one sentence, and it's worth understanding why both halves are true.
Dyslexia fonts are built on an appealing theory: weight the bottoms of letters and exaggerate their differences so that b, d, p, and q are harder to confuse. The problem is that the theory misdiagnoses dyslexia. Dyslexia is a difficulty connecting sounds to written symbols (a phonological processing difference), not a problem with how letters look. Studies that put dyslexic readers in front of these fonts have repeatedly found no reliable gain in accuracy or speed compared to ordinary clean fonts, and kids often read familiar standard fonts slightly better. (That letter-confusion, by the way, has a different fix: see our post on letter reversals and b/d confusion.)
So why not dismiss them entirely? Because comfort is real even when speed gains aren't. Some children say these fonts feel friendlier or less crowded, and a child who feels less dread opening a book reads more. If your child tries OpenDyslexic and likes it, use it. It's free, it harms nothing, and feeling accommodated has its own value. Just don't pay money or burn hope expecting it to fix decoding, and don't let anyone sell you a font as an intervention.
What formatting changes have better evidence?
Here's the quiet irony of the font debate: the research that finds no effect from special letter shapes does find effects from humbler typographic choices. If you want text to be genuinely easier for your child to read, change these:
- Bigger text. Larger font sizes reduce visual crowding and give beginning readers more to work with. This is one reason children's early readers are printed large. Keep that benefit going longer for a dyslexic child.
- More space between letters and lines. Generous letter spacing and line spacing measurably help struggling readers, likely because crowded text makes it harder to isolate each letter during decoding. Extra spacing between letters has more research behind it than any special letter shape.
- Shorter lines and clean pages. Narrow columns, wide margins, and pages without busy backgrounds reduce the chance of losing the line. Off-white backgrounds instead of bright white reduce glare for some kids.
- Any clean sans-serif font. Ordinary fonts like Arial, Verdana, or Helvetica at a good size with good spacing perform as well in studies as the specialty fonts, often better, because they're familiar.
The practical move: on e-readers and tablets, spend two minutes in the display settings with your child. Bump the size up, increase line spacing, narrow the margins, try a font or two, and let them pick. The best configuration is the one your child chooses, because they're the one who has to live in it.
What's the difference between accommodating and remediating?
This distinction is the most important idea in this post, and it's the one that keeps families from wasting years. An accommodation changes the task so your child can succeed today; remediation changes your child's skills so the task itself gets easier.
Text-to-speech, audiobooks, fonts, spacing, extra time on tests: all accommodations. They are ramps: they get your child into the building right now. What they don't do is teach the sound-letter connections that make reading automatic. Only explicit, systematic instruction does that: the Orton-Gillingham and structured literacy approach, delivered consistently. If you're choosing between a tool and instruction, instruction wins every time; the encouraging news is you never have to choose. A child in a solid structured literacy curriculum for 30–60 minutes a day can and should use every helpful accommodation for the rest of the school day.
Watch for the two failure modes, because both are common:
- All tools, no instruction. The child listens to everything and decodes nothing, and the reading gap quietly widens behind the accommodations. Tools are covering the problem, not solving it.
- All instruction, no tools. The child grinds through remediation but is locked out of grade-level science, history, and novels for years because nobody handed them an audiobook. They fall behind in knowledge while catching up in decoding, an unnecessary trade.
Remediate the skill. Accommodate the meantime. That's the whole strategy.
Which tools are worth trying, by purpose?
Skip the app-store rabbit hole. Organize by what your child actually needs help with this week:
For getting information in (reading support)
- Text-to-speech: built into every iPad, Chromebook, and phone your child already owns, free. The workhorse accommodation for schoolwork; we walk through setup in our text-to-speech guide.
- Audiobooks: Learning Ally and Bookshare offer huge audiobook libraries for readers with documented print disabilities; Libby is free through your public library for everyone. More on why these matter in our audiobooks post.
- Immersive readers: Microsoft's Immersive Reader (free in Edge, Word, and Teams) combines read-aloud with spacing, syllable breaks, and line focus in one place. Speechify is the popular paid alternative.
For getting ideas out (writing support)
- Speech-to-text: free dictation on every major device lets your child compose at the level of their thinking instead of their spelling. Agatha Christie dictated; your fourth grader can too.
- Word prediction and spellcheck that tolerates dyslexic spelling: standard spellcheck often can't guess what a dyslexic speller meant. Tools built for the job, like Co:Writer, or the free predictive keyboards on tablets, do better.
For practicing the skill itself
- A structured literacy program: the remediation layer everything else supports. Ours is available on Amazon and written for parents with no teaching background.
- Letter tiles and sound cards: low-tech beats high-tech here; moving physical tiles while saying sounds is core multisensory practice. Free printable versions live in our Resource Hub.
Introduce one tool at a time, give it two honest weeks, and keep what your child actually uses. A short list of tools in daily use beats a long list of installed apps every time.
What's built into this website?
Since we're recommending that websites and materials offer these supports, we hold ourselves to it. Every page on apricottreeacademy.com has an accessibility toolbar (the teal button in the bottom-left corner) that includes an OpenDyslexic font toggle, A−/A+ text sizing, extra letter and line spacing, a click-to-listen text reader, a screen mask, and a text magnifier. Your settings persist as you move around the site.
If your child reads over your shoulder here, or uses our materials on screen, let them try the toggles and keep whatever feels better. It's also a zero-cost way to test the ideas in this post: turn on the dyslexia font and the extra spacing, hand your child the device, and ask which version they'd rather read. Their answer (not the research averages, and not our opinion) is the right setting for them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I buy books printed in a dyslexia font?
Only if your child likes them. The research doesn't show special fonts improving reading accuracy or speed for most dyslexic readers, so don't pay a premium expecting a performance gain. If a publisher your child loves happens to use one, fine. But a well-spaced, generously sized standard font serves most kids just as well.
Is using text-to-speech cheating, or will it make my child dependent?
Neither. Text-to-speech gives your child access to grade-level ideas and vocabulary while their decoding catches up. That's accommodation, and it protects learning and confidence. Dependence only becomes a risk if listening replaces reading instruction entirely. Keep daily structured decoding practice and use text-to-speech for content-heavy schoolwork on top of it.
What's the single most helpful tech tool for a dyslexic child?
For most families, text-to-speech: it's free on every device your child already uses, it works on schoolwork tonight, and it has meaningful research support for comprehension and access. Audiobooks are a close second for building vocabulary and keeping your child in love with stories.
Do colored overlays or tinted lenses help with dyslexia?
The research is not encouraging. Dyslexia is a language-processing difference, not a visual one, and major professional bodies in ophthalmology and pediatrics have concluded that overlays and tinted lenses don't treat it. If your child says an overlay feels more comfortable, it's harmless, but it shouldn't replace reading instruction, and it shouldn't cost much.
If tools don't fix dyslexia, why use them at all?
Because school doesn't pause while remediation works. Tools let your child learn science, enjoy novels, and turn in written work at the level of their thinking (not the level of their decoding) during the years instruction is closing the gap. Skipping accommodations doesn't speed up remediation; it just costs your child knowledge and confidence in the meantime.
