DyslexiFy

Making digital content easier to read for people with dyslexia

🌟 Inspiration Reading online content or academic documents can be frustrating for people with dyslexia. We were inspired by the idea of making digital text more inclusive and easier to consume, especially for students and readers who struggle with traditional formats.

💡 What it does DyslexiFy takes websites and documents (PDF, Word, TXT) and converts them into a dyslexia-friendly format. It:

Extracts clean text (removes ads, menus, clutter).
Summarizes content with AI-powered simplified summaries.
Lets readers customize their experience (font size, spacing, background colors, OpenDyslexic font).
Allows exporting to a dyslexia-friendly PDF for offline reading. ⚠️ Note: If you use a restricted website URL, the summary will not be generated.

🛠️ How we built it

Backend: Flask + SQLAlchemy for core functionality.
Frontend: Jinja2 + Bootstrap 5 with accessibility-first CSS.
Content Extraction: Trafilatura for clean scraping.
AI Summaries: GROQ API for simplified explanations.
Document Handling: PyPDF2, python-docx, TXT parsers.
Export: WeasyPrint for accessible PDF generation.
Deployment: Render for cloud hosting.

🚧 Challenges we ran into

Extracting only meaningful content from websites without noise.
Handling multiple file types (PDF, DOCX, TXT) consistently.
Some websites being restricted, preventing summaries from working.
Keeping the interface simple and non-overwhelming for dyslexic readers.

🏆 Accomplishments that we're proud of

Built a working end-to-end MVP in a short time.
Deployed the project online, accessible globally.
Learned to combine AI + accessibility design in a meaningful way.
Created something that has real-world impact beyond the hackathon.

📚 What we learned

Accessibility is not one-size-fits-all — users need control and customization.
AI summarization works best when combined with clear content extraction.
Cloud deployment requires careful handling of environment variables and dependencies.
Building with empathy is as important as building with code.

🚀 What's next for DyslexiFy