Plainsight is a free Chrome reading-accessibility extension that puts ten reading tools on every page and labels each one with how much research actually supports it. It has no account, no paid tier and no server. CaptureTools, its older sibling, is a free suite of nineteen everyday browser tools in one extension. This post is about why both cost nothing, and what that price does and does not promise.
Why should accessibility tools be free?
Because the people who need them are not a niche. The CDC says more than 1 in 4 U.S. adults have some type of disability. The World Health Organization puts the number of people with a near or distance vision impairment at no fewer than 2.2 billion. Add dyslexia, ADHD, migraine and plain tired eyes, and a reading aid stops being a specialist product. It is closer to a pair of reading glasses.
The web is supposed to meet people halfway already. WCAG 2.2 success criterion 1.4.12, Text Spacing, says content should survive a reader increasing line height, paragraph, letter and word spacing. Plenty of sites never tested that. A browser extension that applies those spacings for you is patching someone else’s homework, and I do not think the reader should be the one paying for the patch.
There is a practical reason too. I build these alone, with Claude, around a day job doing data entry. There is no billing system to maintain, no licence server to keep alive and no account database to leak. Free is also the cheapest thing for me to run, and there is less of it to go wrong on your machine.
What is Plainsight?
Plainsight is a Manifest V3 extension with ten tools: Type and Spacing, Line Focus, Read Aloud, Colour Gradient, Fixation Bolding, Tint and Comfort, Word Tools (syllables and parts of speech), Focus Reader, Look-up, and Vision Filters (colour filters for colour-vision differences). Seven presets bundle them for common needs: spacing, dyslexia, low vision, ADHD focus, migraine and light sensitivity, colour vision, and listening.
It makes no network requests of its own, and a build gate fails the build if any shipped file tries. Two Chrome features can touch the network: Chrome’s server-side text-to-speech voices and settings sync. Both are off by default and labelled when you look at them. Read Aloud highlights words with the CSS Custom Highlight API, so it never rewrites the page to do it.
Build 0.3.2 fixed nine blockers (the store now carries 0.3.5). Two are worth naming. Font size compounded through nested lists, so a three-deep list rendered at 15.63 times its intended size. And the dark theme had a contrast ratio of 1.22:1 against a 4.5:1 floor; it now measures between 14.3:1 and 18.9:1. The full tour is on the Plainsight project page.
Plainsight is now live on the Chrome Web Store as Plainsight, Reading Accessibility Suite, version 0.3.5, published by DHSeaDev. The store also holds an unrelated extension with a similar name, so check the publisher before you install. (Update, later on September 15, 2026: when this post first went up, the listing was still in preparation.)
What does CaptureTools add to everyday browsing?
CaptureTools is one extension holding nineteen tools, built the way PowerToys is built: a shelf of separate utilities that share a settings page. Five are apps (Sealshot, Backtrack, Lantern, Tab Ledger, Focus Ledger). Five are page tools (Scroll Marks, Print Composer, Reader Ledger, Selector Sketch, Form Guard). Nine are small utilities (Paste Sanitizer, Case Convert, Unit Overlay, Anchor Copy, Zoom Memory, Media Speed, Image Alt Peek, Table Copy, Focus Ring).
Three of those overlap with accessibility. Focus Ring puts back the keyboard focus indicator that many sites style away. Image Alt Peek shows the alt text behind images, which is handy for checking your own pages. Zoom Memory keeps each site at the size you set it, which matters more than it sounds if you read at 150 percent.
The install prompt asks only for a quiet set of permissions. Reading tabs and access to sites are optional, requested when you switch on a tool that needs them. The suite carries 267 tests. As of today the Chrome Web Store listing shows version 0.6.0, updated August 31, 2026, with 2 users. Not a big number yet. The launch write-up is CaptureTools is live, and the case for one extension instead of several is in One extension, or six? The CaptureTools project page covers every tool.
What do other reading-accessibility tools cost?
Here is what each vendor’s own pages said as of September 15, 2026. Prices change, so check the linked page before you decide. This is a list of prices and terms, not a ranking; several of these products do things Plainsight does not.
- Helperbird. A free plan at 0 dollars with “no account, no card”; Pro at 35 dollars a year after a 3-day trial; a schools plan at 1,500 dollars a year. Source: Helperbird pricing.
- BeeLine Reader. The browser plugin is free on some websites; unlimited use is BeeLine Pro at 2 dollars a month for one browser or 4.50 dollars a month for five. The PDF plugin is 5 dollars a month. Source: BeeLine Reader individual plans.
- Read and Write (Texthelp, now listed under Everway). An individual licence at 184 dollars a year, district seats from 2.75 dollars each, and a free version; K-12 teachers can get premium free by signing up for an account. Source: Everway pricing.
- Speechify. A free plan with speeds up to 1.5x and 10 voices the page itself calls robotic; Premium at 29 dollars a month on monthly billing. Source: Speechify pricing.
- OpenDyslexic. The typeface is free under the SIL Open Font License, and donations are optional. Source: opendyslexic.org.
- Dark Reader. Free and open source, and its site says it does not send user data anywhere. Plainsight’s dark option only recolours the page canvas and is not trying to replace it. Source: darkreader.org.
- Plainsight. Free, no account, no paid tier. Live on the Chrome Web Store at version 0.3.5.
Paid tools pay for things I do not offer: natural voices, support staff, school admin consoles, training. That is a fair trade. My point is narrower. The basics of readable text (spacing, a line guide, a tint, read-aloud with on-device voices) should not sit behind a card number.
Can a free tool be honest about what works?
It can, and being free makes it easier. Nothing I sell depends on a feature sounding good. So every Plainsight tool shows an evidence grade in the interface, next to its switch: strong, some, mixed, none, or evidence says no.
Fixation bolding, often sold as “bionic reading”, is the awkward one. The evidence for it is weak, and the grade says so. It ships anyway, because some people like how it feels and comfort counts, but nobody turns it on thinking a study promised them faster reading.
Word Tools declines rather than guesses. Syllable splitting covers 100 percent of words and is 97 percent accurate against a hold-out set. Parts-of-speech colouring only colours 77 percent of words, and 96 percent of those are right; the rest are left plain instead of painted wrong. I would rather show you less than show you something false. I learned that the hard way in The gates were green and the button did nothing, about a build that passed every check and still did not work.
What does free not mean?
Free means no price, no account and no data sold, because none is collected. It does not mean everything below.
- No support promise. There is one person behind these, and one inbox: dhseadev@gmail.com. I read it, but there is no response-time guarantee.
- Not complete. Plainsight does not reach text inside open shadow roots, so sites built from web components are partly untouched. It says so in the product.
- Not a medical or assistive-technology assessment. An evidence grade is a summary of published research, not advice for you in particular.
- Not a replacement for accessible sites. An extension patches a page on your screen. The site owner still owes everyone WCAG.
- Not bug-free. Version 0.3.2 exists because 0.3.1 had nine blockers. There will be more, and they will be written up in the devlog.
Where can I get Plainsight and CaptureTools?
Both are live on the Chrome Web Store now. Install Plainsight, and read the full tour on its project page. The CaptureTools store link and the full tool list are on the CaptureTools page.
If you play Dota 2, Dota Companion is another free extension of mine, for match stats and inventory value, with no account and no API key. Everything else I have built is on the projects page.
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