Plainsight: Dyslexia Font, Reading Ruler, Colour Overlay & Dark Mode

Description

Make any site easier to read: dyslexia fonts, spacing, colour overlays, reading rulers, dark mode, read aloud. Free, no account. Plainsight makes any website easier to read. Change the font, open up the spacing, tint the page, follow your line with a reading ruler, strip away the clutter, or have the whole thing read aloud. Built for people with dyslexia, ADHD, low vision, migraine, visual stress and Irlen syndrome — and for anyone who finds the web harder to read than it needs to be. Free. No account. No ads. No trial that expires. Nothing is paywalled, because nobody should have to pay to read a web page. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHAT YOU GET Dyslexia-friendly fonts Switch any website to OpenDyslexic, Lexend, Atkinson Hyperlegible, Verdana, Georgia or Comic Sans. All fonts are bundled inside the extension, so pages load instantly and no font server ever sees your browsing. Letter spacing, word spacing and line height The controls that actually move the needle. Open up the space between letters and words, raise the line height, add room between paragraphs, and cap the line length so your eye never loses its place. This is the best-evidenced part of the extension and it is switched on by default. Reading ruler and reading guide Three kinds. A translucent band that follows your cursor, a thin line that underlines the row you're on, and a spotlight that dims everything except your current line. Adjust the height, colour, opacity and dimming. Prefer not to use a mouse? Switch on keyboard mode and drive the ruler with the arrow keys. Colour overlays and screen tint Eight overlay colours — yellow, rose, aqua, mint, blue, violet, grey, or any custom colour — with adjustable strength. The digital equivalent of a coloured reading sheet, for glare, light sensitivity and visual stress. Real dark mode Nine page themes including cream, sepia, mist, mint, rose, slate, dark and high contrast, plus a custom colour picker. Dark mode ships with two engines: Smart recolours the page properly, and Invert is the blunt fallback for stubborn sites that fight back, flipping media back so photos still look like photos. Reader mode One keystroke strips any article down to clean text — no sidebars, no popups, no related-content grids — and applies your typography settings to it. Includes an estimated reading time. Read aloud Listen to any page or any selection, with word-by-word highlighting inside reader mode. Adjustable speed, pitch and voice. It uses your browser's own speech voices, so it works offline, costs nothing, and no text is ever uploaded anywhere. Bionic-style reading Bold the first part of every word to help your eye anchor to each one. Adjustable strength. Syllable breaks Split long words into syllables — beau·ti·ful — for anyone sounding words out, including readers learning English. Distraction removal for focus and ADHD Hide sidebars, comments, promos, newsletter popups, social share bars and related-content blocks. Hide images and video entirely. Stop animation, carousels and autoplay dead. Low vision support Scale text up to 2.2×, boost font weight, force maximum contrast, emphasise links and headings, and switch on a large or extra-large high-visibility cursor. Double-click dictionary Double-click any word for its definition, with a button to hear it pronounced. Off by default, and it asks permission before it ever connects to anything. Per-site settings — the one nobody else does properly Give any website its own configuration. Cream paper and a reading ruler on news articles, untouched on your email, high contrast on your course site. Switch the popup to "This site" and your changes apply there only. Reading profiles Seven one-click starting points that configure a dozen settings at once: Dyslexia, ADHD Focus, Low Vision, Migraine & Light Sensitivity, Visual Stress / Irlen, Language Learner, and Night Reading. Every value stays adjustable afterwards. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHO IT'S FOR Dyslexia. Open spacing, short lines, warm paper, a ruler to hold your place, and read-aloud for the long pages. ADHD and focus difficulties. A spotlight that follows your line, with everything that moves or competes for attention removed from the page. Low vision and partial sight. Large, heavy text at maximum contrast, with a cursor that is easy to find. Migraine, photophobia and light sensitivity. No pure white anywhere, low brightness, a grey wash to take the edge off glare, and all animation stopped. Visual stress and Irlen syndrome. Coloured overlays over a soft background, with a reading ruler to steady the line. Learning English or reading a second language. Roomy text, syllable breaks, and double-click definitions. Students, teachers and SEN staff. Works on any website, any course platform, any online reading list. Nothing to buy, nothing to license, no accounts to manage for a class. Anyone reading at night. A proper dark mode, not an inverted page. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ AN HONEST NOTE ABOUT THE RESEARCH Most reading extensions sell dyslexia fonts as a treatment. The evidence does not support that, and you deserve to know it. Controlled studies have repeatedly found that OpenDyslexic does not improve reading speed or accuracy compared with ordinary fonts like Arial or Verdana. What does hold up is increased letter and word spacing, shorter line length, reduced contrast, and text-to-speech. So Plainsight ships the fonts — because plenty of people genuinely prefer them, and preference is a real reason to use something — but it makes the evidence-backed settings the defaults. The settings page lays out what the research shows for every feature, including the ones where the evidence is weak or absent, with the studies named. This isn't a disclaimer buried in a footer. It's on the settings page, in plain language, because an accessibility tool that oversells itself isn't doing you a favour. None of this is medical advice. If reading is a persistent struggle, an assessment from a specialist teacher, optometrist or educational psychologist will tell you far more than any browser extension can. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ PRIVACY Installing an accessibility extension can reveal something private about you. That is a very good reason for it not to phone home. ✔ No account, ever ✔ No analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting ✔ No ads, no sponsored content, no affiliate links ✔ Your settings stay in Chrome's own sync storage, readable only by you ✔ Fonts are bundled with the extension, so no font server sees the sites you visit ✔ Your browsing history is never collected, stored or transmitted Plainsight makes exactly one kind of network request, and only if you switch it on. When you enable the double-click dictionary, the single word you clicked is sent to dictionaryapi.dev — no page URL, no cookies, no referrer, nothing stored. It asks permission first, and it's off until you say so. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS Alt+Shift+P — turn Plainsight on or off Alt+Shift+R — cycle the reading ruler Alt+Shift+O — open or close reader mode Alt+Shift+S — read the selection, or the page, aloud ↑ ↓ — move the ruler in keyboard mode Esc — close reader mode All four are remappable from Chrome's shortcut settings. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHY PLAINSIGHT Most accessibility extensions fall into two camps. Either they do one thing and haven't been updated in years, or they do everything and put half of it behind a subscription and a sign-up form. Plainsight is the middle. A full toolkit, properly built, entirely free, with no account and nothing tracking you. Its own interface is set in Atkinson Hyperlegible, a typeface designed by the Braille Institute for low-vision legibility, is fully keyboard navigable, and meets WCAG AAA contrast — because an accessibility tool with an inaccessible interface would be an odd thing to ship. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ GOOD TO KNOW Some sites resist restyling. Smart dark mode won't win against every page built with inline styles, which is exactly why the Invert engine is there. Google Docs draws its text to a canvas, so font and spacing changes can't reach it — reader mode and read-aloud still work. Clutter removal uses pattern matching and will occasionally hide something you wanted, which is why it's a toggle. If something looks wrong on a page, the switch at the top of the popup turns everything off instantly, and per-site settings let you leave that one site alone permanently. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CREDITS Fonts are used under the SIL Open Font License: Atkinson Hyperlegible by the Braille Institute of America, Lexend by the Lexend Project, and OpenDyslexic by Abbie Gonzalez. Definitions come from dictionaryapi.dev. Plainsight is free and open source.

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