Best Apps for Dyslexia in 2026: Reading, Writing and Assistive Technology

The best apps for dyslexia do one of three jobs: read text aloud (Speechify, Voice Dream Reader, ClaroRead), type what you say (Apple Dictation, Google Docs voice typing, or a dedicated dictation app), or catch the spelling mistakes ordinary spell checkers miss (Ghotit, Co:Writer). Most people need one tool from each group, not a dozen.

Estimates of how many people have dyslexia range from about 5% to 20%, depending on the study and where it draws the line. The reading and writing difficulties are real, but they have nothing to do with intelligence. The right assistive technology closes the gap between what you know and what you can get onto a screen.

Below: the apps grouped by job, the free tools already on your devices, reading pens, and how to get assistive technology at school or work.

Quick comparison

What counts as assistive technology for dyslexia

Assistive technology (AT) is any tool that helps with something you'd otherwise struggle with: for dyslexia, decoding text, spelling and organising thoughts in writing. It runs from low-tech (coloured overlays, reading rulers) through reading pens to software: text-to-speech, speech-to-text, word prediction and organisation apps.

The useful distinction is remediation versus compensation. Remediation tools, like Orton-Gillingham programmes and phonics software, build reading and writing skills over time. Compensation tools route around the difficulty so you can get work done now. This guide is mostly about the second kind, because that's what you need when there's a deadline.

Free tools already on your devices

Before you pay for anything, try what ships with your computer and phone.

Mac: System Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content. Turn on Speak Selection, highlight any text and hear it read aloud, with a choice of voices and speeds. Dictation lives under System Settings → Keyboard.

Windows: Narrator is the full screen reader. For lighter use, Immersive Reader in Microsoft Edge reads web pages aloud with word-by-word highlighting. Voice typing opens with Windows key + H.

iPhone and Android: Both have Speak Screen or Select to Speak features. On iPhone, swipe down with two fingers from the top of the screen to have the whole page read aloud. Both keyboards have a microphone key for dictation.

Colour filters: If text seems to shimmer or swim, try a tint before you buy anything. On a Mac it's System Settings → Accessibility → Display → Color Filters; on Windows, Settings → Accessibility → Color filters.

Text-to-speech readers

For many people with dyslexia, listening is faster and more accurate than reading. Text-to-speech (TTS) turns written content into audio so you can take it in through your stronger channel. It works best for consuming information: textbooks, long emails, dense reports. It's less useful for skimming, because audio doesn't let you jump around a page.

Following the text while you listen uses both channels at once, which is why the better apps highlight each word as they read.

Speechify

Speechify reads PDFs, articles, emails and web pages out loud, highlighting each word, at up to 4.5x speed, with over 200 voices across 60+ languages. The founder has dyslexia himself. The OCR feature lets you photograph a printed page and hear it read, which is useful for textbooks and paper handouts.

What doesn't: The free tier is limited to a handful of voices and short sessions. Premium is $139/year, and some users report being charged as soon as a trial starts, so check the terms first.

Voice Dream Reader

Voice Dream is built for deep reading rather than speed. Word-level highlighting syncs with the audio, which reinforces word recognition over time. It imports from Dropbox, web pages, PDFs, Word docs and ePub files, and works with Bookshare and Learning Ally libraries directly. You can adjust voice speed, pitch, font, colours, margins and line spacing.

What works: Excellent highlighting and tracking, imports from almost anywhere, works offline.

What doesn't: iOS and macOS only. The move from a $15 one-time purchase to a $60/year subscription frustrated longtime users.

ClaroRead

ClaroRead reads any text aloud while highlighting it, and integrates with Microsoft Word so it reads documents as you work. It also bundles a screen ruler for line tracking, word prediction, a mind-mapping tool (ClaroIdeas) and a spell checker that understands phonetic mistakes. Type "enuff" or "nolege" and a regular spell checker has no idea what you mean. ClaroRead does.

What works: Reading and writing tools in one package. The phonetic spell checker is excellent.

What doesn't: The $250 one-time licence is steep, the interface looks dated and setup isn't intuitive. Runs on Mac, Windows, Chrome and Edge.

NaturalReader

NaturalReader handles PDFs, Word docs, ePubs and web pages, and the desktop version works offline. The voices are natural enough to listen to for hours.

Speech-to-text and dictation tools

This is the category people most often overlook. If spelling and typing are the bottleneck, skip them. Talk instead.

Dyslexia doesn't affect verbal intelligence. Most people with dyslexia can explain an idea clearly out loud. The breakdown happens when that idea has to be encoded as written text: spelling, letter order, and the working-memory overload of juggling content and mechanics at once. Dictation separates the thinking from the encoding. You say what you mean, and the software handles the spelling and the word boundaries, so the text reflects what you know.

For a wider view of this category, see our roundup of the best voice typing apps.

Blazing Transcribe (Mac)

Blazing Transcribe is our Mac dictation app. This is ours, so weigh that accordingly. Hold fn, talk, let go, and the text is typed into whatever app your cursor is in: Google Docs, email, Slack, anything. It sits in the menu bar, runs 100% on-device so your voice never leaves your Mac, and works offline. A personal dictionary helps with names and terms it would otherwise get wrong, and there's a hands-free mode if holding a key gets tiring.

For someone with dyslexia, this removes the hardest part of writing: the writing. It's free, open source and needs no account.

What doesn't: Mac only, and only macOS 15 or later on Apple Silicon. No phone version, and it doesn't transcribe meetings or audio files. If you're on a Mac and want more options, see our guide to the best dictation app for Mac.

Apple Dictation (built-in)

Every Mac and iPhone has dictation built in. On a Mac, press the Globe or Fn key twice; on iPhone, tap the microphone on the keyboard. It runs on-device on Apple Silicon Macs, so it works offline, and it handles spoken punctuation ("period", "new line", "question mark") in any text field.

What works: Free, already installed, no setup.

What doesn't: Accuracy drops with technical terms, accents and fast speech. You start and stop it each time, which gets awkward for long-form writing.

Windows voice typing

Press Windows key + H with your cursor in a text box and start talking. It's free on Windows 11, but Microsoft says it needs an internet connection, and specialised vocabulary is still hit and miss. For more Windows options, see our hands-free typing software guide.

Google Docs voice typing

If you live in Google Docs, go to Tools → Voice typing, click the microphone and talk. Google lists the latest versions of Chrome, Edge and Safari as supported.

What works: Free, decent accuracy for conversational English, handles basic punctuation and formatting commands.

What doesn't: Needs an internet connection and only works inside Google Docs, not across your whole computer.

Dragon was the long-time standard for dictation, but Nuance discontinued the consumer version and Dragon Professional is Windows only. Our Dragon alternatives guide covers what people use instead.

Writing aids and word prediction

Spelling and grammar checkers built for dyslexic users account for phonetic errors, letter reversals and the word confusion that comes with dyslexia. Word prediction goes a step further: type "bec" and it offers "because", "become" and "became", which catches mistakes before they happen.

Ghotit Real Writer

Ghotit was built for people with dyslexia and dysgraphia. Its spell checker decodes phonetic misspellings that leave mainstream tools guessing, and it catches homophones ("there", "their", "they're"). Word prediction is context-aware, and built-in text-to-speech reads your writing back so you hear errors your eyes skip. It works as a standalone editor or inside Google Docs, Microsoft Office and LibreOffice.

What doesn't: $199 for desktop, the interface is functional rather than pretty, and the iOS versions ($50-70) are separate purchases.

Grammarly

Grammarly isn't designed for dyslexia, but it catches many errors that trip up dyslexic writers: run-on sentences, wrong words, missing articles. It underlines as you write, so you fix errors in the moment instead of while proofreading, which is harder for dyslexic readers. It runs in browsers, on desktop and inside Word and Google Docs.

What doesn't: It isn't built for phonetic misspellings, and heavy errors confuse it. Premium ($12/month) is needed for the most useful features, and it sometimes makes writing sound generic.

Co:Writer

Co:Writer, from Don Johnston, is word prediction designed for people with learning disabilities. It suggests words that fit the grammar of the sentence, copes well with inventive spelling, and has topic dictionaries for specific subjects plus a speech recognition mode. It works with Google Docs, Microsoft Word and Chromebooks. At $5/month for individuals it's reasonable, but it won't help with reading.

Read&Write for Google Chrome

Read&Write adds word prediction, text-to-speech, dictionary lookup and a picture dictionary directly inside Google Docs and web pages. It's heavily used in schools because it fits with Google Classroom.

Reading assistants and comprehensive platforms

These combine text-to-speech, study tools, annotation and writing support in one place.

Kurzweil 3000

Kurzweil 3000 is the heavy hitter for academic settings. It reads documents aloud with word tracking, handles scanned pages through OCR, lets you annotate and extract key points into study notes, and includes a writing tool with word prediction. Its outlines and bubble maps help with organising information. At $500/year for an individual licence it's serious money, and the interface feels institutional.

Learning Ally

Learning Ally is a library of over 80,000 human-narrated titles, focused on textbooks and educational materials, from K-12 through college plus popular fiction. Titles sync with the text so you can read along. It's $135/year, and you can't import your own documents, web pages or emails.

Microsoft Immersive Reader

It's built into OneNote, Word Online, Teams and Edge. It strips page clutter, lets you change font size, spacing and background colour, reads text aloud with highlighting and breaks words into syllables. The grammar tool colours nouns, verbs and adjectives, Picture Dictionary shows images above words, and Line Focus narrows the view to one, three or five lines. It's free if you use Microsoft products, but only works inside Microsoft apps.

Reading pens and other hardware

Reading pens earn their place where you can't use a phone or laptop: exam rooms, libraries with no-device rules, or a stack of printed textbooks.

C-Pen Reader 2: Scans a line of printed text and reads it aloud instantly, with OCR that handles small fonts and complex layouts. It's approved for use in exams in several countries, which is the main reason a phone app hasn't replaced it.

IRISPen Reader 8: Portable, cordless and works offline, with a touchscreen and built-in speaker. Good for students reading printed material on their own.

OrCam Learn: Uses a camera to capture whole blocks of text instead of scanning line by line. Faster for full pages, and more expensive.

Some people with dyslexia also report visual stress when reading, where text seems to shimmer, blur or move. Coloured overlays are cheap enough to test whether colour helps at all. If they do, an optometrist who assesses visual stress (sometimes called Meares-Irlen syndrome) can advise on tinted lenses.

Font and display tools

OpenDyslexic

OpenDyslexic is a free, open-source font with letters weighted at the bottom to stop them seeming to rotate or flip. Install it system-wide on Mac, Windows or Linux, use the Chrome extension to apply it to web pages, or pay $10 for the iOS app. Research on dyslexia-specific fonts is mixed, with some studies showing no measurable improvement, and the heavy letterforms make long documents feel dense. It costs nothing to try, so try it.

BeeLine Reader

BeeLine runs a colour gradient across each line, so your eye follows the colour from the end of one line to the start of the next. It's a simple idea that helps some readers with line-skipping, with no learning curve. It's $2/month or $20/year (some university libraries provide free access) and only affects web pages and supported e-readers.

Organisation and note-taking

Dyslexia often comes with difficulties around working memory, time and multi-step tasks. Tools that hold the structure for you help.

Notion combines notes, tasks, databases and calendars, and its visual layouts (toggles, tables, kanban boards) reduce reliance on dense text. It's free for personal use, though setting it up from scratch can feel overwhelming.

OneNote pairs a free-form canvas with Immersive Reader, so anything you write (typed, handwritten, audio or images) can be read back to you. Audio recordings sync with typed notes: tap a word and hear what was being said when you typed it.

Mind mapping lets you organise ideas spatially instead of in a linear outline. MindNode (Mac and iOS) and XMind (cross-platform) both turn a map into an outline when you're ready to write.

Recorded notes: Livescribe smart pens link audio to what you write, and Otter.ai records and transcribes digitally. Both help in lectures where you can't keep up.

Tasks: Pick something with minimal reading overhead. Todoist and Things 3 both take voice input, and Siri or Google Assistant reminders let you capture to-dos without typing.

Assistive technology at school and university

In the US, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and Section 504 entitle students with documented dyslexia to reasonable accommodations. Common ones include:

• Extended time on tests and assignments
• Text-to-speech for reading materials and exams
• Speech-to-text for written answers
• Audio textbooks (Bookshare is free for qualifying US students; Learning Ally is another source)
• Reading pens in exams
• Recorded lectures, or oral presentations instead of written reports

For K-12, request an evaluation through the school district. If it confirms dyslexia, the school writes an IEP (Individualized Education Program) or a 504 Plan listing the accommodations. A private diagnosis isn't required, though it can speed things up.

At college, the student drives the process: register with the disability services office and provide documentation, such as a psychoeducational evaluation or a previous IEP. Most colleges provide exam accommodations and lend assistive technology.

Learning to dictate essays early is worth the effort. Expect a couple of weeks of ramp-up before it feels natural; our guide to dictation software for writers covers the habits that help.

Assistive technology at work

Adults with dyslexia are protected too. In the US, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations. In the UK, the Equality Act 2010 covers similar ground, where they're called reasonable adjustments.

The setups that work best combine technology with small process changes:

• Technology: speech-to-text for emails and reports, text-to-speech for long documents, a phonetic spell checker (Ghotit) or Grammarly, screen colour filters, noise-cancelling headphones.
• Process: verbal instructions alongside written ones, agendas sent in advance, permission to record meetings, training material in more than one format, and sans-serif fonts like Calibri or Verdana as standard.

You don't need to tell your whole team. Speak to HR or your manager, bring documentation from a qualified professional, and be specific: "I need speech-to-text software" gets further than "I need help with writing." The Job Accommodation Network (askjan.org) keeps a free database of accommodation ideas by disability type. Naming the cost helps too: Apple Dictation and Windows voice typing are free, and Grammarly Premium is $12/month.

How to choose the right tools

Don't install everything on this list, or you'll spend more time managing software than reading or writing.

Start with the bottleneck. Is it reading long documents, writing emails, spelling, or keeping track of meetings? Pick the one task that costs you most, find one tool for it, and get comfortable before adding another.

Try free and built-in options first. Spoken Content, Narrator, Apple Dictation and Google Docs voice typing are good enough to tell you whether a category helps before you pay.

Check it fits your workflow. A TTS app that can't open PDFs is useless if your textbooks are PDFs.

Think about privacy. Cloud-based tools send your audio or text to remote servers. That's usually fine for schoolwork. For medical, legal or confidential work, on-device processing keeps your data on your machine. Our guide to hands-free computer use covers the trade-offs.

Then match the tools to your situation:

• Reading is the main struggle: Speechify (cross-platform) or Voice Dream Reader (Apple). Try the free tiers before committing.
• Writing is the main struggle: a dictation tool removes the typing bottleneck, paired with Ghotit or Grammarly for clean-up.
• Student: Kurzweil 3000 or the free Immersive Reader, with OneNote for notes and Learning Ally for textbooks.
• Professional: Speechify for reading, a solid dictation setup for writing, Grammarly for polish. Keep it lean.
• Tight budget: Apple Dictation, Google Docs voice typing, OpenDyslexic and Immersive Reader. All free, not the best in every category, but they do the job.

If you're on a Mac and writing is the bottleneck, Blazing Transcribe is free to try.

FAQ

What is the best app for dyslexia?

The best app for dyslexia depends on the task. For reading, Speechify or Voice Dream Reader; for writing, a dictation tool such as Apple Dictation or Blazing Transcribe on a Mac; for spelling, Ghotit or Co:Writer.

Are there free apps for dyslexia?

Yes, several good apps for dyslexia are free. Apple Dictation, Windows voice typing, Google Docs voice typing, the built-in text-to-speech on Mac, Windows, iPhone and Android, Microsoft Immersive Reader, OpenDyslexic and Grammarly's free tier all cost nothing.

What assistive technology is used for dyslexia?

The main assistive technology for dyslexia is text-to-speech, speech-to-text, word prediction and phonetic spell checkers. Reading pens, coloured overlays and organisation tools such as mind maps and recorded notes fill the gaps.

Is speech to text good for dyslexia?

Yes, speech to text is one of the most useful tools for dyslexia, because it separates thinking from spelling. You say what you mean and the software handles letter order and word boundaries, so your writing reflects what you know.

Do dyslexia fonts like OpenDyslexic work?

Dyslexia fonts work for some people, but the research is mixed and some studies show no measurable improvement. OpenDyslexic is free, so it's worth trying for a week to see whether it helps you.

Can students use assistive technology in exams?

Yes, students with documented dyslexia can usually use assistive technology in exams. In the US, an IEP or 504 Plan (or college disability services) can grant text-to-speech, speech-to-text, extra time and reading pens, and the C-Pen Reader is approved for exams in several countries.

Does my employer have to provide assistive technology for dyslexia?

Your employer has to make reasonable accommodations, and assistive technology for dyslexia is a common one. The ADA in the US and the Equality Act 2010 in the UK set this out, and speech-to-text, text-to-speech and spell-checking software are typical requests.