Tailo — AI Academic Reading App for Neurodivergent Students

Tailo is an AI-powered reading and research app built for disabled and neurodivergent university students. It turns dense academic papers, PDFs and web pages into a reading environment students can shape to how they work — with adjustable fonts, spacing, colours and layout, text-to-speech, structured summaries and plain-English explanations of any highlighted word or passage. Founder Chris Hughes is dyslexic himself, and built Tailo from his own experience of academic reading as a barrier rather than a route in.

Each feature targets a specific difficulty. For dyslexic students, dyslexia-friendly fonts, Read Aloud and document overviews reduce the energy spent on decoding so comprehension isn't lost. For students with ADHD, estimated reading times, chunked structure and on-demand explanations help sustain focus across long reading lists. For autistic students, customisable and predictable display settings give control over the reading environment, and pacing tools help when anxiety or low mood make a workload feel unmanageable. An AI tutor answers questions on the specific document in front of the student, and any text can be turned into a conversational audio overview.

A companion Chrome extension sends papers into Tailo from Google Scholar, JSTOR, open-access journals and university library portals, and can flag whether a paper is relevant before it is opened in full. Tailo is free to sign up to, is available to many UK students through their Disabled Students' Allowance (DSA) support package, and has received the Scope Accessible Product Award.