Accessible fonts: typography everyone can read

What makes a font accessible?

An accessible font is a typeface whose letterforms stay distinguishable at small sizes, low vision, and fast reading: each character has a distinct shape, letters are not easily mirrored or confused, spacing is generous, and the design holds up when users enlarge it or change its spacing. Accessibility lives in the combination of typeface, size, spacing and contrast - a "good" font set too small or too tight fails just as hard as a decorative one.

WCAG deliberately does not name fonts. What it regulates is how text behaves: it must meet contrast minimums, survive 200% resizing, tolerate user-adjusted spacing, and be real text rather than images of text. Choose a typeface that makes those easy.

The letterform features that matter

• Distinct I / l / 1 and O / 0 - in many popular fonts a capital I, lowercase l and the digit 1 are near-identical. Accessible faces differentiate them (tails, serifs on the I, slashed or distinct zero).
• Non-mirrored letters - b/d and p/q that are exact mirror images are harder for readers with dyslexia; better faces vary the bowls and stems.
• Open apertures - the openings in c, e, a and s stay open, so they do not close up into o-like blobs at small sizes.
• Generous x-height - lowercase letters that are tall relative to capitals read better at the same point size.
• Even, roomy spacing - tight tracking and condensed widths crowd letters into each other; rn should never read as m.
• Restrained weight range - very thin ("hairline") and very heavy text both lose letter definition; regular-to-medium weights read best for body copy.

Fonts that do well

Measured against those features, these widely available faces perform well for body text:

• Atkinson Hyperlegible - designed by the Braille Institute specifically for low-vision readers; free, with strongly differentiated characters.
• Verdana and Tahoma - large x-height and wide spacing; designed for screens.
• Arial, Helvetica, Open Sans, Lato, Source Sans - clean, familiar sans-serifs with good letter distinction at text sizes.
• Georgia - if you want a serif for long reading, its screen-first design keeps letterforms clear where print serifs degrade.

Faces to avoid for body copy: decorative and script fonts, condensed cuts, ultra-light weights, and all-caps settings for running text (word shapes disappear, slowing every reader down).

Size, spacing and contrast: the numbers

• Size - WCAG mandates no minimum, but 16px body text is the practical modern baseline; whatever you choose must stay functional when the user resizes to 200%.
• Contrast - at least 4.5:1 for normal text, 3:1 for large text (18pt+, or 14pt bold). Test any pairing free with our color contrast checker.
• Spacing - your layout must not break when readers apply line height 1.5x, paragraph spacing 2x, letter spacing 0.12x - readers with dyslexia and low vision do exactly that.
• Real text - never bake copy into images; images of text cannot be resized, re-spaced or restyled by the people who need to.

Do dyslexia fonts work?

Purpose-built faces such as OpenDyslexic weight the bottoms of letters to reduce flipping. The honest answer from reading research: results are mixed - controlled studies have not shown consistent speed or comprehension gains over ordinary clear sans-serifs, and some readers simply prefer familiar faces. What reliably helps readers with dyslexia is bigger type, more line spacing, shorter line lengths, and letting the reader choose - which is why offering font and spacing controls beats hard-coding any single "dyslexia font".

That is how the EqualWeb accessibility widget approaches it: visitors can switch the page to a readable font, enlarge text, spread line height and letter spacing, or turn on a text magnifier - each reader tunes the typography to what works for them.

Frequently asked questions

Last updated 17 August 2026. Reviewed by the EqualWeb accessibility team.