Text to Speech for Dyslexia: A Guide for Website Owners
Text to speech for dyslexia means giving readers the option to hear your words read aloud while they see them on the page. Dyslexia mainly affects reading and spelling, so listening lets a reader take in the meaning without having to decode every word first. For a website owner, that comes down to two jobs: write and lay out your pages so they are easier to read, and add an audio player with read-along highlighting, speed control and a way to listen to just one passage.
This guide is for bloggers, publishers, educators and anyone who runs a website. It is not medical advice. Every claim about dyslexia below links to the organization that made it.
What dyslexia is, in plain terms
The British Dyslexia Association (BDA) (opens in a new tab) describes dyslexia as a specific learning difficulty that primarily affects reading and writing skills, and adds that it is really about how information is processed. The BDA also points out that many dyslexic people show strengths in reasoning and in visual and creative fields.
The International Dyslexia Association (IDA) (opens in a new tab), in its definition adopted in October 2025, describes difficulties with word reading and spelling that affect accuracy, speed or both. It lists reading comprehension problems among the secondary consequences.
Two points matter most for site owners:
- People with dyslexia are not all the same. The BDA says dyslexic difficulties exist on a continuum and range in severity. Understood.org (opens in a new tab) notes that symptoms vary from person to person.
- Reading can be tiring. Understood lists feeling tired after reading, and not understanding what you have read, among the signs of dyslexia in adults.
So there is no single "dyslexia setting" for a website. The goal is to offer choices: clear text for people who prefer to read, and good audio for people who prefer to listen, or to do both at once.
How does text to speech help readers with dyslexia?
Understood explains the link between text to speech and dyslexia clearly. In its article on software that helps with reading challenges (opens in a new tab), it says that when text is read aloud, readers do not have to sound out or recognize each word. They can listen and put their effort into understanding what is being said, and they can read along to practice fluency.
Its guide to what text-to-speech technology is (opens in a new tab) adds three useful points:
- Seeing and hearing text together makes reading multisensory.
- Many text to speech tools highlight words as they are read, so the reader can follow along.
- Reading speed can usually be made faster or slower.
The W3C's guidance on cognitive accessibility, Making Content Usable for People with Cognitive and Learning Disabilities (opens in a new tab), lists "text-to-speech support, with synchronized highlighting" among the user needs it records, so people can follow along as words are read aloud.
What text to speech does not do is equally important. It is a support that some readers find useful, not a treatment, and it will not suit everyone. Offer it as an option, never as a replacement for well-written text.
How to make text easier to read for dyslexia
Audio works best on top of text that is already easy to read. The BDA's Dyslexia Style Guide 2023 is short and practical. It says its principles consider the difficulties some dyslexic readers face and allow for the use of text to speech, and that they make written material easier on the eye for everyone. It also recommends using them together with other accessibility guidance such as WCAG.
Here is how its main recommendations translate to a website. The first two columns come from the guide; the last column is our suggestion for putting each one into practice.
| Topic | What the BDA style guide recommends | How to apply it on a website |
|---|---|---|
| Font | Sans serif fonts such as Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, Calibri or Open Sans | Set a plain sans serif font for body text in your theme |
| Font size | 12-14 point or equivalent (about 16-19 px); some readers may want larger | Use at least 16px for body text and let browser zoom work |
| Spacing | Slightly larger letter spacing; line spacing of 1.5 (150%) is preferable | Set line-height: 1.5 on body text |
| Emphasis | Avoid underlining and italics, which can make text look crowded; use bold | Use bold for emphasis; keep underlines for links only |
| Capitals | Avoid capital letters for continuous text | Write body text in sentence case, not all caps |
| Headings | Headings at least 20% larger than body text, with extra space around them | Use real heading levels (H2, H3) in the editor, not bold paragraphs |
| Alignment | Left align text, without justification; avoid multiple columns | Turn off justified text and newspaper-style columns |
| Sentences | Short, simple sentences; the guide gives 60 to 70 characters as optimal | Split long sentences when you edit |
| Color | Single-colour backgrounds, good contrast, dark text on a light (not white) background such as cream | Consider an off-white page background with dark text |
| Writing style | Active voice, everyday words, bullet points, no double negatives, explain jargon and abbreviations | Spell out abbreviations the first time you use them |
The guide also asks that links look different from headings and normal text, and that long documents are broken up with regular section headings. The W3C note makes similar points: use clear words, keep text succinct, and use white space so that sections are clearly separated.
One more tip from the W3C note helps audio directly: keep your text as real text. It describes a reader who tries to highlight a document to have it read aloud, only to find it is an image of text. Text inside images cannot be selected, highlighted or read by most text to speech tools.
Features that help in an audio player, and why
Not every audio player is equally useful to a reader with dyslexia. When you choose one, look for these features.
Read-along highlighting
Highlighting each sentence or word as it is spoken lets the reader see and hear the same words at the same time. This is the "synchronized highlighting" the W3C note describes, and the feature Understood says many text to speech tools provide.
Speed control
Some people want faster audio, others slower. Understood lists reading at different speeds as a helpful feature. The W3C note also describes a reader who cannot speed up text to speech because of how they process sound. The safe choice is to let each visitor pick their own speed.
Pause and resume
A clear pause button lets a reader stop, reread a sentence, or take a break, then carry on from the same place. That matters on long articles.
Listen to a selected passage
Understood describes text to speech as something you use by clicking on or highlighting words. Being able to select one paragraph, or one tricky word, and hear only that part is often more useful than playing the whole article from the top.
A consistent, well-pronounced voice
Use the same voice across your site, and fix names and terms it gets wrong. Understood mentions pronunciation dictionaries, which correct how text to speech says words like names, as a helpful feature. The W3C note asks for consistent design across pages; a consistent voice follows the same idea.
Text to speech tools for dyslexia that readers already have
Many readers already use their own tools, and your site should work well with them. A few examples, each described on the vendor's help pages:
- Google Chrome on a computer offers reading mode with Read aloud (opens in a new tab), including playback speed, voice choice and word or sentence highlighting. Google notes it does not work on every site.
- Microsoft Edge has Reading mode (opens in a new tab) with Read aloud, voice options and adjustable reading speed.
- iPhone and iPad have Speak Selection and Speak Screen (opens in a new tab), under Spoken Content in the Accessibility settings.
- Android has Select to Speak (opens in a new tab), which reads selected items on the screen aloud.
These tools rely on the same things the style guide asks for: real text, clear headings and a clean page structure. A built-in player simply saves visitors from having to know these tools exist, and puts a Listen button right where they are reading.
How to add text to speech to your own website
On WordPress
AtlasVoice is our free WordPress plugin, listed on WordPress.org as Text To Speech TTS Accessibility (opens in a new tab). It adds a Listen button to your posts and pages and uses the visitor's browser voices by default, so there is no account or API key to set up. For readers with dyslexia, the features that matter most are:
- Read-along highlighting: the text is highlighted sentence by sentence, and word by word with supported voices, in colors you choose. You can dim the rest of the article and let the page scroll along.
- Listen to selection: visitors can select any passage to hear only that part, or click a word to start reading from there.
- Visitor settings: during playback, visitors can open a settings panel to change the speed, voice, pitch and volume, and the player remembers their choice.
- Pronunciation: text aliases let you tell the player how to say abbreviations, names and other words it misreads.
Highlighting and listen-to-selection are off by default; turn them on in the plugin's Highlight tab. Browser voices depend on each visitor's device, so the voice can differ between browsers. Our step-by-step guide shows how to add text to speech to WordPress posts (opens in a new tab).
On any other website
If your site is not on WordPress, the AtlasVoice API (opens in a new tab) turns text into an MP3 that you store and play on your own pages. The free plan includes 100,000 characters a month. Note that the API returns audio only, so read-along highlighting is not part of it; you would add your own player controls. Our guide to adding text to speech to any website (opens in a new tab) compares the options, including browser-based ones.
Audio supports your accessibility work; it does not replace it
Adding a Listen button is a helpful step, but it does not make a website accessible on its own, and it does not make a site compliant with WCAG or with laws such as the European Accessibility Act. Clear writing, good structure and a readable layout still do most of the work. Our article on audio articles and the European Accessibility Act (opens in a new tab) explains where audio fits.
Next step
Pick one popular page on your site. Check it against the BDA style guide table above, then add a Listen button with read-along highlighting and listen-to-selection turned on. If you use WordPress, you can install AtlasVoice for free from WordPress.org (opens in a new tab) and try it on that page first.
