Best fonts for dyslexia and ADHD — with live previews
Most "best dyslexia font" articles show you screenshots. That's useless — font response is intensely personal. Below, every font renders live in your browser so your own eyes can judge, with honest notes on what research actually found.
Written by Deepika Solapurkar, founder of FocusReader (which ships several of these fonts built in).
Quick answer
There is no single best font — every controlled study finds individual variation swamps average effects. The strongest general picks: Lexend (designed to reduce visual crowding; fluency gains for some readers), Atkinson Hyperlegible (maximum letter distinction, by the Braille Institute), and Verdana (wide, unambiguous, everywhere). OpenDyslexic shows no average gains in studies, yet some dyslexic readers strongly prefer its weighted-bottom letters — and preference itself improves reading persistence. What matters more than the font: size, line height (1.6-1.9), and line length. Test below with your own eyes.
Lexendfree · Google Fonts · designed for reading proficiency
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Reading felt like work until the page stopped fighting back — 1Il| 0O boat bread dread.
Verdict: designed specifically to reduce visual crowding; peer-reviewed work found reading-fluency improvements for a meaningful share of students. The best default for ADHD readers, and FocusReader's UI font.
Atkinson Hyperlegiblefree · Google Fonts · Braille Institute
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Reading felt like work until the page stopped fighting back — 1Il| 0O boat bread dread.
Verdict: engineered so no two characters can be confused (look at the 1Il| test). Designed for low vision, loved well beyond it. Excellent for letter-flippers. Built into FocusReader.
OpenDyslexicfree · open source · weighted bottoms
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Reading felt like work until the page stopped fighting back — 1Il| 0O boat bread dread.
Verdict: the honest one — studies show no average speed/accuracy gains, but some dyslexic readers swear by the anchored, bottom-heavy letters that resist flipping. If it feels better to you, that's a real result. Free to download; built into FocusReader.
Verdanapreinstalled on almost everything
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Reading felt like work until the page stopped fighting back — 1Il| 0O boat bread dread.
Verdict: the British Dyslexia Association's classic recommendation: wide letters, generous spacing, unambiguous forms, zero installation. The safe pick when you can't install fonts.
Georgia (serif, for contrast)preinstalled
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Reading felt like work until the page stopped fighting back — 1Il| 0O boat bread dread.
Verdict: serifs are traditionally discouraged for dyslexia (the strokes add visual noise), but a minority of readers genuinely track better with them. Included so you can test the claim on your own eyes rather than take it on faith.
What matters more than the font
Size, spacing, and line length beat letterforms. The most consistent findings across reading-accessibility research: larger text, line height around 1.6-1.9, and shorter lines (50-70 characters) reduce line-skipping and re-reading more reliably than any font swap. Use the sliders above — you'll likely feel a bigger difference moving line height than switching families.
And spacing pairs with anchor emphasis: bolding the first letters of each word gives your eye a fixation target inside whatever font you choose. Try both together with the free converter.
How to actually choose
Pick the two fonts that felt best above. Read one real page of something you're actually reading in each — not a pangram, a real page. Keep whichever one you noticed less. "I forgot about the font" is the winning outcome. If none feel different, keep your default and spend the win on size and line height instead.
All of these fonts, on your own books
FocusReader ships Lexend, Atkinson Hyperlegible, OpenDyslexic and adjustable size/spacing — on any PDF, EPUB, or article you upload, with anchor emphasis and word-synced read-aloud. Free for 3 books.