OpenDyslexic, A Free Dyslexia Font
I find dyslexia fonts fascinating. I would love to use them, not because I have dyslexia, but because in making the fonts readable for those with dyslexia, the fonts are made very pleasant and readable to others. Unfortunately, many of these have restrictions, or are not affordable for an individual. I am making an alternative: OpenDyslexic. If you have a modern browser, you can see it is the default font for this website.
OpenDyslexic is a free as in beer open source font. It is based on Bitstream Vera Sans, and licensed under a CC license. Even though this font has a way to go, you can download it and use it today. You can use it as a system font. You can use it on your website. You can use @font-face. You don’t have to try to keep it from others. You can package it with an ebook reader. Just make sure to give credit where credit is due. 
If you are using this font and would like to share how, leave a comment below, or using the contact flyout contact form to the left. I’d love to hear how this is being used.
Download open-dyslexic.ttf (windows, mac, linux, and everywhere .ttf’s are used), now on dafont!
If you enjoy using this font and would like to donate (so I can work on it more without burning out. ), you can donate here:
open-dyslexic by Abelardo Gonzalez Jr is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at github.com.
–Update: Moving all project files over to http://dyslexicfonts.com to help consolidate all my work. Fonts, ebooks, how-to’s, etc available there.
I will try it on my site and let you know i will all so like your blog
Thanks! If you need any help, let me know!
I’ll try to put up some instructions for websites, etc. if you need it.
Im dyslexic and would like to use this font.Can you download it on a smartphone?
Can you download this onto a d
Droid or smartphone?Janine
Yes, you can. I don’t currently have a package available for android, there is an app called font changer, that lets you change and install fonts on your rooted phone. More information about that is available here: http://bit.ly/rya3n .
If a website uses this font properly, you should be able to see the font on your iphone/android/webOS etc. Browser. You can look at the quick brown fox example above.
For iPhones, you will need to jailbreak to use this as a system font. And for webOS, I’ve made a package available on github.
Any other phone, I can only say it is possible, but I couldn’t tell you how.
Thanks for making this font!!! We heard of another one that was very expensive so when we heard of yours licensed under the creative commons we were very excited.
One quick question. Do you have any plans for a serif-based version? Serifs help dislexics stay on the same line of text.
Thanks again!!!
Thank you for your thank you. It made my day.
I do have every intention of expanding the font family, and can definitely make a serif version. It may be a little while before I start work on it though, as I’m one person working on one font at a time.
Glad you like the font so far.
That’s great! My wife is dyslexic and would love to have this font!
My daughter is too.
Let me know what they think of it. I’d love to get more input.
The most current version of the font is on dafont.com for the time being.
Can you tell me what principles is the font based on? I mean, what does the font do to help the people read?
Thanks in advance.
By using bottom-heavy fonts and increasing differences between characters, it can help prevent letter swapping, flipping or rotating.
Trying to work on solutions for things like line swapping, etc. That this font may not help with.
We have a school ful of dyslexic kids so we’re very excited to try it. The other…ahem…$400 one…looks great but is way too expensive for us to experiment with. Thanks for this, and we’ll let you know how it works for our kids.
Thank you! I am excited to hear how this turns out for you!
Any plans to do a mono-space version of this? Would be great to use for coding. Good looking font.
Also, best place to donate to you/the project?
Sure! I just added a paypal link to the original post. Thanks!!!!!
Thank you for your comment. I have been working an a mono-spaced version.
All I can say is soon though.
OpenDyslexic has been incredibly helpful for me, after only 24 hours of use. I was never diagnosed as dyslexic, although I’ve always been a very slow reader. When the “Dyslexie” font appeared, I noticed how much easier it was to read. Unfortunately its author had already switched to a non-free, overpriced, anti-piracy crusader business model which I simply cannot support. So, I was overjoyed to find OpenDyslexic, and I will happily donate to your project. Thank you a million times! I’m reading much faster, and the “reading voice” inside my head is starting to go away for the first time in my life. I’m still overwhelmed by the idea that I can go to Project Gutenberg and start digesting literature which has been out of my reach for so long.
My only suggestion would be to increase the spacing of the bold face. It’s a bit too tight, so the characters run together for me.
I’m using this Chrome extension to change all page fonts: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ckefmbejpadmeacgojmmgplclichanaa
What I still haven’t found is an easy and effective way to change the fonts in PDF eBooks.
Thank you for your comment! I’ve been a bit underwater with projects recently, but will update the kerning on the bold font soon. I’m also excited that you are enjoying it!
Unfortunately, changing the default fonts in PDF’s has been somewhat of a chore. I’m not sure if this works in free versions of Acrobat, but in the preferences dialog, there should be an option for font substitution. If not, or you can’t change the fonts on the device you are using, feel free to email me one or two, and I’ll embed the font in it for you.
The chrome extension you mentioned is pretty sweet. I’ve compiled a safari extension if you happen to use that browser, at http://dyslexicfonts.com/downloads
Thank you again for your comment. It made my day.
I don’t see anything like that in Acrobat X for Mac. What process/software would you use? I would be happy to find any solution, even if it’s command-line.
On the mac, I have an automator action that can extract the text into a text file, and then I can print to PDF after changing the font style. Outside of that, it looks like you’d need Acrobat Pro, or another PDF editor.