OpenDyslexic font: does it actually help kids read better?

Last updated 2026-07-09

What is OpenDyslexic and where did it come from?

OpenDyslexic is a free, open-source typeface created by Abelardo González and first released publicly around 2011. González has dyslexia himself. He built the font on a simple hunch: give each letter a heavy bottom, and readers will stop flipping or rotating characters, a frustration he lived with. The font costs nothing, runs on most operating systems and browsers, and has been downloaded millions of times.^[1]

The letters have exaggerated descenders, thicker bottoms, and wider spacing than a typical font like Times New Roman or Arial. The reasoning is intuitive. If the bottom of a "b" looks visually heavier than the top, your brain is less likely to read it as a "d." That logic spread the font fast across social media in the early 2010s, and it showed up in apps like Instapaper, the Amazon Kindle app, and various school reading platforms.

Here's the honest starting point. OpenDyslexic came from a person with lived experience, not from reading scientists, and it never went through clinical trials. That does not make it worthless. It does mean the evidence behind it looks nothing like the evidence behind structured literacy curricula that have been tested across thousands of children. The font caught on because it was free, easy to install, and felt helpful. Whether it works is a separate question, and the rest of this piece answers it.

What does the research say about OpenDyslexic's effectiveness?

The research is not encouraging. It is also not huge. Several controlled studies have put OpenDyslexic head to head with standard fonts, and most find no real advantage for reading speed or accuracy.^[2]

A 2013 study in PLOS ONE by Wery and Diliberto tested OpenDyslexic against Arial with 48 children who had dyslexia. They found no significant difference in reading speed, accuracy, or comprehension between the two fonts.^[2] A 2016 study in Dyslexia, the journal of the British Dyslexia Association, by Marinus and colleagues tested 100 children and reached the same conclusion. OpenDyslexic did not beat a standard sans-serif font on any reading measure.^[3]

The theory behind the font has a bigger problem. The dominant scientific understanding of dyslexia is that it comes from a phonological processing difficulty. The brain struggles to map written symbols to sounds. It is not, for most kids, a visual problem where letters flip and rotate.^[4] IDEA, the federal special education law, defines specific learning disability in a way that fits this phonological picture, covering disorders in "basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written."^[5] Letter reversal is a normal stage of early reading in all children and usually clears up by age 7 or 8, no matter what font is on the page.

Nobody has good data from a large, long-term randomized controlled trial of OpenDyslexic. The studies we have are small and short. Absence of evidence is not proof the font helps no one, but it does mean you should distrust strong claims in either direction.

Some researchers point out that if a font lowers anxiety or cognitive load for a given reader, even a placebo-like comfort effect could nudge performance up a little. That is plausible. It is not the same as a direct neurological benefit, and it does not replace teaching a child to read.

How does OpenDyslexic compare to other dyslexia-friendly fonts?

OpenDyslexic is not the only font sold as dyslexia-friendly. Dyslexie (created by Dutch designer Christian Boer) and Lexie Readable are two others. A few fonts came out of more explicit research involvement, including Read Regular.

The table below lays out what we actually know about the main options.

Font	Cost	Open source	Peer-reviewed evidence	Notes
OpenDyslexic	Free	Yes	3-4 small studies, no consistent benefit found	Widest adoption, easiest to install
Dyslexie	Free for personal/home use; school licensing costs apply	No	1 small study (Wery & Diliberto 2013 tested it too)	Visually similar approach to OpenDyslexic
Lexie Readable	Free	No	Minimal independent research	Designed by a dyslexic person
Arial	Free (system font)	Varies	Performed comparably to OpenDyslexic in most controlled studies	Often used as the control condition
Verdana	Free (system font)	Varies	Some evidence for readability in general low-vision research	Wide letter spacing is the likely reason

The honest takeaway is this. Sans-serif fonts with wider letter spacing tend to beat serif fonts for struggling readers, but among the sans-serif options, no specialty dyslexia font has been shown to beat a well-chosen standard font like Arial or Verdana.^[10] Spacing may matter more than the typeface. A 2012 study in PNAS by Zorzi and colleagues found that adding extra space between letters improved reading speed and accuracy in a sample of Italian children with dyslexia, and the spacing effect held up no matter which typeface they used.^[6]

For a fuller look at how typeface choices get evaluated, the ReadFlare guide on dyslexia fonts covers the whole field, spacing research included.

Font choice is one small variable in a much bigger picture. To see that picture, the ReadFlare overview of learning disabilities gives you the broader context your child's reading fits inside.

Why do so many kids and adults say it helps, even if studies disagree?

This is the most honest question in the whole conversation. The answer has four parts, and none of them are simple.

Individual variation is real. Studies report averages. A font that shows no group benefit across 100 children can still help a specific kid. Reading research is full of interventions that do nothing for most students and change everything for a small subset. If your child reads faster and feels less frustrated with OpenDyslexic, that matters, whatever the mean difference was in a 2016 journal article.

Expectation and reduced anxiety are not trivial. Many children with dyslexia have spent years feeling humiliated by reading. If a font makes a page feel less threatening, that emotional shift can lift performance in the short term. Whether it lasts is unknown.

Some features of OpenDyslexic really do line up with what general readability research recommends: wider letter spacing, a larger x-height, clear differences between look-alike letters.^[6] The catch is that standard accessible fonts like Verdana and Trebuchet MS share those same features and cost nothing either.

Publication bias is real too. Studies that find no effect are less exciting to publish, so the literature may slightly undercount the null results.

None of this means dismiss the font. It means keep it in its lane. A free, harmless accommodation some kids find helpful. Not a treatment, not a substitute for instruction, and not worth a dime when the free version already exists.

Can a school be required to use OpenDyslexic as an accommodation?

Yes, under some circumstances, if you know your legal ground. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and IDEA both require schools to provide reasonable accommodations to students with qualifying disabilities.^[9] A student with a documented dyslexia diagnosis or a specific learning disability in reading who shows a functional benefit from a particular font can ask that the font be used for printed materials, digital texts, and assessments.

The key phrase is functional benefit. You want some evidence, even informal documentation from a tutor, a reading specialist, or the student, that the font helps this specific child.

Schools do not have to adopt OpenDyslexic district-wide or prove it is research-based before offering it to one student. Accommodations under 504 plans and IEPs are individualized by design. IDEA defines a free appropriate public education (FAPE) as special education and related services provided "in conformity with the individualized education program" of the student.^[5] The font simply gets listed as an accommodation in the IEP or 504 plan.

What schools do not have to do is accept OpenDyslexic as a substitute for evidence-based reading instruction. A font is a presentation accommodation. It is not a reading intervention. If your child's plan offers a font change and no structured literacy instruction, push back. The IEP team should be talking about Orton-Gillingham-based approaches or another structured phonics program, not tweaking how the text looks.

To understand what a strong IEP looks like for a reader with dyslexia, get familiar with the signs of dyslexia so you can build your case before the meeting. It also helps to have a formal dyslexia test done, so the team has documented evidence to work from.

How do you actually install and use OpenDyslexic?

OpenDyslexic is easy to set up, which is one honest reason it caught on. On a computer, download the font files from the official source (opendyslexic.org, which links to the GitHub repository). Install the .otf or .ttf files into your system font folder. On Windows, right-click the file and choose "Install." On macOS, double-click and hit "Install Font." After that, any app that uses system fonts (Word, Google Docs, Pages, most e-readers) can pull OpenDyslexic from its font menu.^[1]

On mobile, several apps bundle the font directly. The Kindle app on iOS and Android lets you pick OpenDyslexic from its font settings with no external install. Voice Dream Reader, a popular text-to-speech app for struggling readers, includes it too. Google Chrome has a browser extension called OpenDyslexic that applies the font to most web pages automatically.

For school use, Google Workspace for Education lets administrators install custom fonts across a district's Chromebooks. So a school IT team can make OpenDyslexic available to specific students without touching every device by hand.

One practical note. OpenDyslexic is not universally loved by readers with dyslexia. Some find it harder to read than Arial. Some call the weighted bottoms distracting. Let your child try it for two to three weeks on real reading material before you decide. And do more than ask "do you like it?" Most kids will say yes to anything that feels different from the thing that frustrates them. Watch whether fluency actually improves.

Is OpenDyslexic free, and are there any costs to know about?

OpenDyslexic is completely free for personal, educational, and commercial use. It is released under the SIL Open Font License, so anyone can download, modify, and share it without paying a fee.^[1]

There are no school licensing costs, no subscription tiers, and no premium version. The GitHub repository has been public since around 2011 and shows no sign of going behind a paywall.

What you may run into are third-party products that bundle OpenDyslexic and charge for the app around it. Some reading apps carry a subscription and list OpenDyslexic as one font option. The font itself is not why those apps cost money. If someone is charging you specifically for OpenDyslexic, they are charging you for something you can get free.

Dyslexie, the font people often confuse with OpenDyslexic, does carry a licensing cost for schools. Dyslexie uses per-seat licensing that can reach several hundred dollars for a classroom or school, depending on the tier. That distinction matters. If a vendor is pushing Dyslexie over OpenDyslexic, the research favoring one over the other is essentially nonexistent, so the price gap is hard to defend on academic grounds.

What does OpenDyslexic not fix, and what actually helps dyslexic readers?

Here is where the conversation has to go, because the font's popularity sometimes distracts from what children with dyslexia actually need.

Dyslexia is, at its core, a difficulty with phonological processing. The brain struggles to break spoken words into their component sounds (phonemes) and to map those sounds onto written letters. That difficulty does not respond to font changes, because it is not the visual problem the font's design assumes.^[4] The International Dyslexia Association describes dyslexia as "a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin" and notes it is "characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities."^[4]

What the research supports, over and over, is structured literacy instruction. Programs built on explicit, systematic phonics, phonemic awareness training, and multisensory methods have the strongest evidence base for children with dyslexia. The What Works Clearinghouse at the Institute of Education Sciences has reviewed structured literacy programs and found positive effects for decoding and reading fluency.^[7] The National Reading Panel's report remains the foundational federal synthesis, naming phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension as the five pillars of effective reading instruction.^[8]

Beyond instruction, other accommodations carry more evidence than font changes: text-to-speech technology, extended time on reading tasks, audio versions of texts, and reducing visual clutter on the page. Wider line spacing and larger font size also have broader support than the specific OpenDyslexic design.

If your child has or might have phonological dyslexia, the most common subtype, a font change will not touch the underlying deficit. Same for kids with a rapid naming deficit or a double deficit, where both phonological processing and naming speed are involved. Knowing which specific difficulties your child has tells you which interventions are worth the effort.

If you are building a set of genuinely evidence-based reading supports, the ReadFlare reading toolkit (readflare.com) includes structured phonics tools and an advocacy guide for working with schools. A font can live in a child's comfort kit. It should sit next to real instruction, never in place of it.

Are there kids for whom OpenDyslexic is especially worth trying?

Probably yes, even though the average group evidence is weak.

Children who describe letters as "moving," "switching," or "looking the same" may get something from the visual differentiation the font provides. Kids with strong visual processing alongside phonological difficulties sometimes respond to visual supports differently than kids whose reading trouble is purely phonological. That said, what looks like letters moving or flipping is usually normal visual processing running into an undertrained phonics system, not a separate visual-spatial disorder. The idea of "visual dyslexia" as a category distinct from phonological dyslexia is contested in the literature (see our piece on visual dyslexia for the debate).

Children who resist reading because it feels impossible might get something from the novelty of a new font. Anything that keeps a reluctant reader on the page a little longer has indirect value. That is not a strong argument for OpenDyslexic specifically, but it is an honest one.

Adults with dyslexia choosing their own reading environment, on their e-reader, in their browser, in their word processor, are the clearest case for just trying it. Zero cost, zero risk. If it feels better, it feels better. The evidence question matters most for schools spending resources and for anyone being told a font will fix a reading disability.

Children who have had a thorough learning disability test and understand the specific shape of their reading difficulty are in the best spot to experiment with fonts intelligently, because they and their parents know what they are and are not trying to accomplish.

How should parents talk to teachers and IEP teams about font accommodations?

Walk in with realistic expectations and clear goals. If your child says OpenDyslexic helps, bring that observation to the IEP or 504 meeting. You do not need a peer-reviewed study to request an individual accommodation. You need documentation that the child has a qualifying disability plus some basis for believing the accommodation helps this specific student. A note from a tutor or a reading log showing better fluency at home with the font can support the request.

Be ready for pushback from tech staff who say the font is hard to install on school devices. Sometimes that is a real constraint. Sometimes it is a brush-off. For Chromebook schools, the Google Workspace font path genuinely works, and IT can implement it without touching every machine. For Word or Google Docs on any device, the student changes the font in their own document once it is installed.

Do not let font talk crowd out the bigger conversation. If the meeting spends 20 minutes on font preferences and five on reading intervention, something has gone wrong. The font is the five-minute item. Reading instruction is the 20-minute item.

Ask directly: What structured literacy program is being used? How many minutes of direct phonics instruction does my child get each week? Who delivers it, and what is their training? Those questions matter far more than whether the school will install a font.

For parents who want to go deeper on advocacy, the signs of dyslexia page helps you describe your child's specific challenges in language that maps to IEP eligibility criteria, and the ReadFlare parent advocacy kit at readflare.com has templates for the written requests that tend to get faster responses from schools.

What are the most common mistakes parents make with OpenDyslexic?

Three patterns come up again and again.

The first is treating the font as an intervention instead of an accommodation. Parents install OpenDyslexic, see their child look more comfortable, and assume the reading problem is handled. It is not. The font changes what text looks like on the page. It does not build the phonological skills the child needs to decode unfamiliar words, which is the actual deficit in most dyslexia.

The second is using it as a reason to delay formal evaluation. Some parents try the font, see a bit of comfort improvement, and feel like they have found a workaround. A formal evaluation, through the school or a private psychologist, matters because it creates a legal paper trail that opens up IEP or 504 protections, and because it pins down what the child actually needs. A font is not a diagnosis and cannot stand in for one.

The third is assuming that because the font is popular and loved by many people with dyslexia, the studies must be wrong or biased. The studies are small, true. But the mechanism the font relies on, visual letter confusion as the main driver of dyslexia, is not well supported by current reading science.^[4] You can take user experience seriously and take the phonological research seriously at the same time. Both things are true.

Sight word practice is another spot where parents over-invest in visual supports at the expense of phonics. Dolch sight words and first-grade sight words are useful, but they work best alongside phonics instruction, not as a separate visual memorization track.

Frequently asked questions

Is OpenDyslexic actually free to download and use at school?

Yes, completely free. OpenDyslexic is released under the SIL Open Font License, which allows use in schools, businesses, and personal settings at no cost. There is no school licensing fee, no premium tier, no subscription. Download it from the official source at opendyslexic.org, which links to the GitHub repository. If a vendor charges you for OpenDyslexic specifically, they are charging for the service around it, not the font.

Does OpenDyslexic work on Kindle, iPads, and Chromebooks?

Yes, on all three, with some variation. The Kindle app on iOS and Android includes OpenDyslexic as a built-in font option. On iPad, you can install the font system-wide using a font manager app. On Chromebooks, school administrators can push the font through Google Workspace for Education, or individual students can install it via a Chrome extension called OpenDyslexic that applies it to web pages automatically.

What do studies actually say about OpenDyslexic helping kids read?

Most controlled studies find no statistically significant improvement in reading speed, accuracy, or comprehension when OpenDyslexic is compared to standard sans-serif fonts like Arial. A 2013 PLOS ONE study and a 2016 study in the journal Dyslexia both found this. The studies are small, and individual responses vary, but the group-level evidence does not support OpenDyslexic as reliably better than a free standard font.

Can I request OpenDyslexic in my child's IEP or 504 plan?

Yes. Under IDEA and Section 504, schools must provide individualized accommodations to students with qualifying disabilities. If your child has a documented learning disability in reading and shows a functional benefit from OpenDyslexic, the IEP or 504 team can list it as a presentation accommodation. You do not need a peer-reviewed study to make the request. Documentation that it helps your specific child is enough.

Why does my child say OpenDyslexic helps even if the studies are negative?

Individual responses differ from group averages. A font that shows no benefit across 100 children can still help a specific child, especially one who feels less anxious looking at the page. Some features of OpenDyslexic, wider spacing and a larger x-height, match general readability research. Comfort and reduced cognitive load are real, even if the font's specific theory about letter-flipping is not well supported scientifically.

Is OpenDyslexic better than Arial, Verdana, or other standard fonts?

The research says no, or at least not consistently. Studies comparing OpenDyslexic to standard sans-serif fonts like Arial or Verdana find comparable performance. Wider letter spacing matters more than the specific font design, and Verdana and Arial already have relatively wide spacing. If you want a free, research-adjacent font for a struggling reader, a large-size Arial or Verdana with 1.5x line spacing may perform just as well.

Does using OpenDyslexic mean my child doesn't need phonics instruction?

No, and this is the point that matters most. Dyslexia is primarily a phonological processing difficulty, not a visual one. Font changes do not build the phonemic awareness and decoding skills children need. OpenDyslexic can be a comfort accommodation, but it does not replace structured literacy instruction, which is what the research shows actually improves reading outcomes for children with dyslexia.

What is the difference between OpenDyslexic and the Dyslexie font?

Both use similar design principles: weighted letter bottoms, unique shapes for look-alike letters, wider spacing. The main differences are cost and licensing. OpenDyslexic is completely free and open-source. Dyslexie charges per-seat licensing fees for school use that can run several hundred dollars per classroom. The research evidence for one over the other is essentially equivalent, meaning minimal controlled studies support either.

Can adults with dyslexia benefit from OpenDyslexic even if kids don't show consistent benefits?

Possibly. Adults can self-select and self-report more reliably than children, and an adult who finds OpenDyslexic more comfortable for sustained reading should just use it. There are no costs or risks. The research gaps are the same for adults as for children, but the stakes are lower when one adult makes a personal choice about their own reading environment versus a school making a system-wide instructional decision.

Are there any risks or downsides to using OpenDyslexic?

No medical or safety risks. The practical downsides are minor. The font looks unusual, which some people find distracting. It may not be available in every software environment. Some readers with dyslexia find it harder to read than Arial. The only meaningful risk is the opportunity cost of treating a font change as a real intervention rather than putting that energy into structured literacy instruction and formal evaluation.

How is letter spacing different from the OpenDyslexic font design, and which matters more?

Letter spacing is the space between characters in any font. Research by Zorzi and colleagues in PNAS (2012) found that adding extra spacing between letters improved reading in children with dyslexia regardless of the font used. OpenDyslexic builds in some spacing, but so do Arial and Verdana. The Zorzi research suggests spacing is likely the active ingredient, not the weighted letter bottoms OpenDyslexic is designed around.

What should I do if the school refuses to use OpenDyslexic as an accommodation?

Make the request in writing first, so there is a paper trail. If the school refuses, ask for a prior written notice explaining the reason, which is required under IDEA. If your child has a 504 plan, file a grievance with the district's 504 coordinator. If you believe the refusal violates FAPE, you can request a due process hearing or file a complaint with your state's department of education. Document everything.

Does OpenDyslexic help with number dyslexia or dyscalculia?

There is no research on this specific question. OpenDyslexic does include numerals with the same weighted-bottom design, which might theoretically reduce confusion between look-alike digits like 6 and 9. But dyscalculia, sometimes called number dyslexia, involves difficulty with number sense and mathematical processing, not mainly visual symbol confusion. A font change is unlikely to touch those underlying difficulties.

Sources

1. OpenDyslexic, official site and GitHub repository: OpenDyslexic is free, open-source under the SIL Open Font License, created by Abelardo González.
2. Wery J.J. & Diliberto J.A., PLOS ONE, 2013 – 'The effect of a specialized dyslexia font, OpenDyslexic, on reading rate and accuracy': Study of 48 children with dyslexia found no significant difference in reading speed, accuracy, or comprehension between OpenDyslexic and Arial.
3. Marinus E. et al., Dyslexia (Wiley), 2016 – 'The OpenDyslexic font does not benefit reading in children with or without dyslexia': Study of 100 children found OpenDyslexic did not outperform a standard sans-serif font on any reading measure.
4. International Dyslexia Association, Definition of Dyslexia: Dyslexia is 'a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin' characterized by phonological processing difficulties, not primarily visual letter confusion.
5. U.S. Department of Education, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), 20 U.S.C. § 1400 et seq.: IDEA defines specific learning disability as covering disorders in basic psychological processes involved in understanding or using language; FAPE must be provided in conformity with the student's IEP.
6. Zorzi M. et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 2012 – 'Extra-large letter spacing improves reading in dyslexia': Extra letter spacing improved reading speed and accuracy in children with dyslexia independent of typeface, suggesting spacing matters more than specific font design.
7. What Works Clearinghouse, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education: WWC reviews show structured literacy programs have positive effects on decoding and reading fluency for students with dyslexia.
8. National Reading Panel, Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read, NIH Publication No. 00-4769, 2000: The five pillars of effective reading instruction are phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension; this is the foundational federal synthesis of reading science.
9. U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973: Section 504 requires schools to provide reasonable accommodations, including presentation accommodations like font changes, to students with qualifying disabilities.
10. Rello L. & Baeza-Yates R., ACM ASSETS 2013 – 'Good Fonts for Dyslexia': Study found sans-serif fonts (Arial, Helvetica, Courier, Verdana) resulted in better reading performance than serif fonts; no specialty dyslexia font outperformed the best standard fonts.