The Dyslexie font helps me read with convergence and accommodative insufficiency resulting from head trauma

The biggest problem with the visual issues that came with my head injury (for the googlers: my diagnosis was convergence insufficiency and accommodative insufficiency) is that I can no longer effortlessly skim large, dense pages of text, especially on screen.

Instead of "YAY, a new article/blog post/fanfic!", my visceral reaction is "AAAAH! Wall of text!"  It takes work to read things that would previously need no work, and all too often I'd just skip interesting articles or stories that I would otherwise enjoy, because I don't have it in me to put in the work. (Especially after a full day of translating, where I have to put in the work).

When I was researching vision therapy, I stumbled upon the fact that many child vision therapy patients are initially diagnosed as dyslexic. Apparently the difficulties with reading look the same to external observers, and, since the children have never been able to read, they can't tell the difference between "pulling the letters into focus and keeping them there is hard" and "reading is hard".

I remembered seeing something about a font designed for people with dyslexia. Even though I'm not dyslexic, maybe it could also help me?

It turns out there's a browser extension called OpenDyslexic that lets you toggle the Dyslexie font on and off.  So I gave it a try, my eyes instantly relaxed, and I could once again effortlessly skim and absorb everything.

When I hit a wall of text, I just toggle it on, and suddenly it's back to being effortless to read!  It doesn't change the formatting like Firefox's reader mode does, it's the same layout and design as the regular webpage - just with this funny-looking font instead.  It even works with dynamic, constantly-updating pages like Twitter!

Because Dyslexie is funny-looking, I don't like to use it all the time. When the combination of font, layout, spacing and colours is such that I don't struggle to read, I actually find Dyslexie intrusive. Fortunately, the OpenDyslexia browser extension makes it effortless to toggle on and off, so I don't have to choose.

I don't know if the improvements I experience with OpenDyslexia are specific to my post head trauma convergence insufficiency and accommodative insufficiency, or if the design of the Dyslexie font can make dense text more skimmable to anyone. But if you struggle with walls of text for any reason, it might be worth giving OpenDyslexia a try. It's free, it takes seconds to install, and you can switch if off instantly if it doesn't help.