Which font for a dyslexic child? Test it on their own text before choosing

"Put it in OpenDyslexic." That is often the first piece of advice you get when a child struggles to read. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes the child finds the letters odd and reads even more slowly.

The font matters, but there is no miracle font. The most reliable way is still to try it on the child's own text, with them, and keep what actually helps.

What the research says

"Dyslexia fonts" have been tested. The results are more mixed than their reputation.

• The shape of the letters matters less than the space around them. One study compared the Dyslexie font (designed for dyslexic readers) with Arial in children who struggled to read. The children read slightly faster in Dyslexie. But when Arial was given the same spacing, the difference disappeared (Marinus et al., 2016).
• OpenDyslexic did not make dyslexic pupils read faster or more accurately than Arial or Times New Roman (Wery and Diliberto, 2017).
• Spacing letters out helps, especially the children who struggle most. With wider spacing, dyslexic children aged 8 to 14 made half as many errors and read over 20% faster (Zorzi et al., 2012).
• Shorter lines also help some dyslexic readers read faster or understand better (Schneps et al., 2013).

In short: choose a sans-serif font with clearly distinct letters, then adjust the size, line spacing and letter spacing. And check with the child: what they prefer is not always what helps them most.

The four fonts we suggest trying

All four are free to use.

How to test with your child, in 5 minutes

1. Take a real sentence from their homework, not a sample text. If you can, one with letters they mix up (b, d, p, q…).
2. Make the text bigger first. Size is often the setting that changes the most.
3. Have them read the same sentence in each font. Watch: where do they hesitate? Where do they slip up? Do they go faster?
4. Adjust the line spacing, the letter spacing and the word spacing. A little more space often helps. Too much can get in the way.
5. Ask what they think, but trust what you saw. If they are torn between two settings, try again another day, on another text.

A free tool to compare the four fonts

To run this test without a word processor, we have put a free tool online: dysadapt.com/polices-dys.

• Paste or type any text you like, for example an instruction from their homework.
• Switch from one font to another with a click: Andika, Marelle, OpenDyslexic, Luciole.
• Adjust the size, line spacing, letter spacing and word spacing, and see the result straight away.
• Print the text or save it as a PDF with those settings.

No account needed. The text stays in your browser. The page also explains where each font comes from and where to download it to install it on your computer.

And for the class worksheets?

Once you have found the right settings, you still have to apply them to every worksheet, every evening or every week. That is what DysAdapt does: you set the font, size and spacing once in the child's profile, then take a photo of the worksheet. The exercise comes out with their settings, as a printable version or to do on a computer or tablet. See also: Adapt once, not every evening.