Open-Dyslexic is a game changer.
Reading is still relatively new to me, especially books. My grandmother left me he ereader and been using it for 4 years, recently I converted several books to open-dyslexia as a test and honesly. Its been great.
Is it basically a different font that is easier for dyslexics to read? Or something else?
The former, easier to read. That being said, studies suggest the font isn't as effective as they'd have you believe.
Try spritz apparently they have iOS and Android apps now but I used to use it on pc. It rained my sight reading to the point that I only look dyslexic when I'm typing fast.
Yup, it bypasses the weird shit our brains do to words. Not necessarily for everyone, or perfectly, but it really does help. Other fonts can do similar, but this one is the most popular, and easier to get
It does a few things for me, generally I get stuck on words much less and am able to sight read words with less false interpretations. And after reading for an extensive period of time I feel less fatigued than I do with other main fonts. Even the punctuation is clearer, something I tend to miss meaning sentences weeve in to one another or quotes "" end up becoming part of the sentence which has had me very confused in the past.
Dyslexia is a very broad diagnosis, when I was statemented at about 7yo, I was told I have classical dyslexia (not sure this is an actual definition. Edit, this is not a formal definition and is a short hand for Phonological dyslexia "where the primary difficulty is in phonological processing, i.e., breaking down words into their component sounds, which affects decoding and reading new or unfamiliar words.") so I'm sure this font can help many but not all.
So to answer: yes, its a more readably font for most dyslexics. I don't know the magic on the back end but from first glance, capitalisation and lower cases is more apparent, 0 and o's are as well having a small dot inside the number 0, also 1's and l's and i's are all clearer. Line spacing and letter spacing are much clearer too. I would imagine most fonts are made to meet two criteria: style, readability. Whereas open dyslexia has its sole focus on readability with very little focus on style.