Most people expect reading online to be quick and easy. For many users, it is not. A line gets reread. Letters feel too close together. A full page of text feels like work rather than information.
That experience is common for people with dyslexia, and it shows up across everyday web tasks. Dyslexia affects how written language is processed, not how capable someone is. And since the web still relies heavily on text, from forms and dashboards to product pages and help centers, typography carries more influence than teams often realize. However, while typography cannot remove dyslexia, design choices around text can significantly reduce effort and improve how easily users navigate written content.
This article covers what dyslexia can look like in digital reading, what we do and do not know about dyslexia-friendly fonts, and how to make typography choices that improve readability without breaking brand consistency.
Dyslexia and Digital Reading: What’s Actually Going On?
Dyslexia is a language-based neurological difference. It affects how the brain decodes written language, including sequencing and the connection between sounds and symbols. It is not tied to intelligence, effort, or motivation. Many people with dyslexia are strong problem-solvers and strategic thinkers; they simply expend more mental energy to get through text that others process automatically.
This experience is far from rare. According to the International Dyslexia Association, an estimated 15–20% of the population shows some symptoms of dyslexia. These can include slow or inaccurate reading, spelling difficulties, challenges with written expression, or mixing up similar letters and words. For most websites, that represents a meaningful portion of everyday users.
For those with dyslexia, certain reading challenges often appear. Similar letters like b and d, or p and q, can be difficult to distinguish. Readers may lose their place in a paragraph when lines are tightly spaced or visually crowded. Characters such as O and 0, or l and I, can blur together. Over time, these small frictions accumulate and lead to fatigue, frustration, or disengagement.
Digital interfaces can increase these challenges. Small font sizes, tight line spacing, low contrast, and dense layouts increase cognitive load. Responsive designs can further compress text on smaller screens, making tracking even harder. Typography cannot change how dyslexia works, but it can either add to the effort required to read or strip away barriers that make reading harder than it needs to be.
What We Already Know About “Dyslexia-Friendly” Fonts
There is no single typeface that works for every person with dyslexia. Research has not identified a universally effective dyslexic font that consistently improves reading speed or accuracy. What does come through, however, is that some fonts feel less tiring and easier to stay with, especially during longer reading sessions.
That distinction is important. Dyslexia varies from person to person, and even modest improvements in comfort can affect whether someone completes a form, follows instructions, or keeps reading. For design and development teams, the goal is not to find the “right” font. It is to reduce friction wherever possible.
This is reflected in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). The guidelines do not require dyslexia-specific fonts. Instead, they focus on spacing, contrast, structure, and consistency. These factors create a more stable reading environment that often supports dyslexic users while improving usability for many others. Fonts are most effective when they are considered as part of that broader system, not treated as a standalone solution.
How WCAG Supports Dyslexic Readers in Practice
WCAG does not include criteria written specifically for dyslexia, and that is intentional. Instead of prescribing solutions, it sets expectations for how text should behave across different contexts and user needs. Those expectations shape readability, reduce cognitive strain, and create more stable reading environments. For people with dyslexia and other learning differences, that stability is often the difference between staying engaged and giving up.
Several WCAG criteria influence the reading experience in ways teams directly control.
WCAG requires that line height, letter spacing, and paragraph spacing can be increased without breaking layouts. When spacing is flexible, text becomes easier to track and less visually demanding, especially during longer interactions.
Sufficient contrast between text and background keeps characters distinct. Poor contrast slows recognition and increases effort, turning simple reading tasks into work.
Text must scale without loss of content or functionality. This allows readers to increase the size without relying on browser zoom or assistive tools, reducing strain and preserving layout integrity.
Info and Relationships (1.3.1)
Content structure must be communicated through proper headings, lists, and semantic markup. A clear hierarchy supports orientation, helping readers understand where they are and how information is organized.
Color cannot be the only way meaning is conveyed. Removing color-only cues reduces the risk of missed information and improves clarity across different visual and cognitive needs.
When content is complex, WCAG encourages clearer wording or alternatives. This reduces cognitive load and helps more users understand content without extra effort.
Taken together, these criteria explain why font choice alone is not a solution. WCAG focuses on the conditions that allow typography to work: spacing, contrast, scaling, and structure. While it does not require a dyslexia-friendly font, it gives teams a framework for making type and layout decisions that support dyslexic readers as part of broader cognitive accessibility—without forcing a redesign or abandoning brand standards.
Core Characteristics of Dyslexia-Friendly Typography
When teams talk about dyslexia-friendly typography, it is easy to jump straight to font names. In practice, the bigger wins usually come from agreeing on the characteristics that make text easier to read—regardless of which typeface ends up in use. That shared understanding gives teams flexibility without reopening the same conversation every time.
Clear letterforms matter more than personality.
Sans-serif fonts tend to work well because they avoid decorative details that compete with the letter shapes themselves. When letters are clean and clearly formed, common look-alikes are easier to tell apart, especially during scanning or longer reads.
Open shapes help readers move faster.
Letters like c, e, and a benefit from open apertures rather than tight, closed forms. A slightly taller x-height also helps text hold up at everyday body sizes, particularly on mobile, where space is limited and zooming is not always practical.
Steady stroke weight reduces effort.
Typefaces with extreme thin-to-thick transitions can lose clarity depending on screen quality, lighting, or contrast. More even stroke weights tend to feel calmer and easier to read across devices.
Spacing often does the heavy lifting.
Letter spacing keeps characters from blurring together. Word spacing creates separation without breaking reading rhythm. Line spacing makes it easier to keep place from one line to the next. In many cases, adjusting spacing improves readability more than introducing a specialized dyslexia font.
Examples of Dyslexia-Friendly Fonts and How to Use Them Wisely
Many commonly available fonts already work well for dyslexic readers. Fonts such as Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, Open Sans, Roboto, Inter, Nunito Sans, and Atkinson Hyperlegible share familiar traits: open shapes, minimal ornamentation, and consistent spacing. The most useful way to evaluate them is not in isolation, but in real layouts—body text, forms, error messages—across the devices people actually use.
Purpose-built dyslexia fonts can also play a role, especially in reading-heavy experiences. These fonts often exaggerate differences between similar letters or add visual weight to anchor characters more clearly. They tend to work best as an optional setting or reading mode, rather than a default that reshapes an entire brand.
However, brand considerations still apply. Brand typefaces are often designed to make an impression, not to carry long instructions or dense content. A common, practical approach is to reserve branded fonts for headlines and short marketing moments, and rely on a more readable body font for functional text. When teams have clear rules for when readability takes priority, accessibility stops being a debate and starts becoming part of normal design decisions—including when offering a dyslexia-friendly font option makes sense.
Layout Choices That Affect Reading Stability
Fonts do not operate in isolation. Size, spacing, and structure determine whether text feels steady to read or slowly becomes harder to stay with.
Body text needs room to breathe. If text is too small, too tight, or too wide, readers are more likely to lose their place or tire more quickly. The goal is not precision, but resilience—text that remains readable as pages get denser or screens get smaller.
Spacing needs to hold up when users change it. Many people adjust letter spacing, word spacing, or zoom to reduce strain. When layouts cannot absorb those changes, readability drops even if the font itself is well chosen.
Alignment and structure also shape how text is tracked. Left-aligned body copy provides a consistent starting edge. Distinct headings and shorter paragraphs make it easier to re-orient without rereading. These choices reduce effort, especially on longer pages.
Taken together, these layout decisions often have more impact than changing fonts. When layout and spacing are stable, typography has room to do its job—even when font choices stay the same.
Making Dyslexia-Friendly Typography Part of the System
Typography becomes more reliable when it’s built into the system instead of handled one screen at a time. When font choices, spacing ranges, and basic text behaviors live inside a design system, teams avoid one-off fixes, and the reading experience stays more stable across forms, tables, cards, and other recurring components.
Engineering patterns help carry that consistency forward. Shared tokens or variables keep typography decisions from drifting. When sizing and spacing scale cleanly across breakpoints, browser zoom, and user overrides, layouts hold together even as conditions change.
Content follows the same logic. Clear writing and predictable structure support the same readers who rely on steady typography. When content and typography are reviewed together, teams have a better chance of producing patterns that hold up across the full product, not just on the surface.
Letting Users Personalize the Reading Experience
No single typography setup works for everyone, and many people adjust text in ways that make reading easier for them. When interfaces allow changes to size, spacing, or contrast—and stay stable when those changes happen—the experience tends to hold up better across long sessions and dense content.
Many users already bring their own tools. Extensions like OpenDyslexic let people restyle text across the web, adjusting letterforms and spacing to reduce strain. This does not replace the need for accessible typography, but it does remind teams that personalization is already happening. The priority is ensuring the interface still works when text looks different from the default.
Real feedback helps shape those decisions. Observing how dyslexic readers move through content often reveals patterns that automated checks miss—where fatigue sets in, where tracking becomes harder, or where spacing changes make a noticeable difference. Small variations in typography or layout can shift how comfortably people reach the end of a task.
These decisions evolve over time. As design systems grow or brands change direction, typography may need to be revisited. Input from users, support teams, and real usage patterns can highlight where reading is still harder than it needs to be, even when everything appears to meet the standard on paper.
Fonts as One Powerful Piece of a Larger Accessibility Story
Typography will not remove dyslexia, but it can change how hard people have to work to stay with your content. There is no single font that solves this for everyone, and most teams do not need to rethink their brand to make progress. When font choices, spacing, and structure are handled with care, reading becomes less about getting through the page and more about staying engaged with it.
At 216digital, we treat accessibility as part of how a site is built and maintained—not a separate layer added at the end. Typography, layout, interaction patterns, and content all influence how well people can move through your site, and they work best when they’re considered together.
If you want support aligning those decisions with WCAG 2.1 and your long-term roadmap, our team is here to help. Schedule a complementary ADA Strategy Briefing to talk through your goals and learn what it takes to create and maintain an accessible experience that stands up under real use.