Bearing Disability: Dyslexia and Reading Challenges

Many think of dyslexia as a learning disability… and in some ways they are correct, but not in the way people tend to think. There are strengths and weaknesses in dyslexia. Yes, it affects my reading and writing. That is more to do with how my brain processes phonetics than it does with intelligence.

In fact, dyslexia does not affect my intelligence.

Steve Jobs, Orlando Bloom, Walt Disney and Albert Einstein are some famous people known to have dyslexia. All of them have been known for their creativity, and Einstein in particular for his high intelligence.

Dyslexia has an affect on my creativity and problem solving skills in a positive way. I love telling stories and I like to code and customise this site. But it does have its challenges. It affects how I relate sounds to letters. It can affect my working memory, and how I process auditory information. The most obvious symptom of dyslexia is reading. I read slower than people my own age.

Before I discovered I had dyslexia, I often got annoyed with myself for reading slower than my peers and slower than those younger than me. However, since the diagnosis, I now understand why.

Below are some of the things that makes reading difficult for me.

Hyphenated words with line breaks

I find hyphenated words difficult to read, especially if they are not usually hyphenated but are used to send half a word onto the next line—known as line breaking. Words like dis-appeared, hap-penning are difficult to read if broken apart. I am not the only one, as seen on the Amazon Form. But I cannot find any dyslexic sites that explain why. I feel Ann’s reasons are correct though.

Dyslexic people struggle to read and write because we think phonetically. The word subtle is one one of my nightmare words. I know the B is silent but no matter how often I tell myself this, I read it as sub-til and not soot-til.

Hyphenate a word that is usually alright phonetically, and the phonetics of that word can change. It slows down reading as I have to go back, reread the hyphenated word and manually remove the hyphen in my mind while keeping context of the sentence.

I read somewhere that having the font larger helps people with dyslexia, which I believe can be true… but enlarge the font on an e-reader and you end up with more hyphenated words. And I hate it. I really hate it.

Also, the enlarged font does not help if reading from an actual book.

Black on White

I actually looked this up and apparently, most e-readers and webpages will use a slight off-white colour and a dark-grey colour to help with this. Dyslexics—for reasons I am not sure of—apparently have difficulty with processing high contrast. I have experienced it myself. The text kind of sways a bit and there is a feeling of motion sickness attached. And now writing this, I think I understand why reading while travelling gives me motion sickness.

Before my dyslexic diagnosis, I would often switch my mac brightness to 1 or 2 stops to lowest brightness and still do. It makes the whiteness of the page—Google Docs and WordPress editor especially as there is no ‘night mode’— a light grey colour while the text remains black. A print screen will not be affected by this, so the image will look white to you.

People would often ask me why my screen was so dark but I found it perfect. I always keep auto-brightness off because of this too. Now, I also have an app: Claroread. It can filter my screen and tint it into another colour. I like the blue tint, not because it is my favourite colour, but because it is the only one that will help me read on a screen.

On e-readers, I invert the colours from black on white, to white on black. This also helps, I think because black is a hue that represents emptiness? But that’s just a guess.

Phonetics

At school, I remember being told over and over again: spell it how it sounds. This is the English Language… and I’m also a Brummie, we say “orse” instead of horse and “swimmin’ pool” instead of Swimming pool. Easy to learn to ignore some accent pronunciation But then you have words like:

• knife, knight, know
• gnome
• chameleon (I spelt this as Cameleon in my dyslexic assessment).
• receipt,
• subtle

And then you have the homophones… You know, the things that sound the same but have different spellings… Yes teachers, spelling phonetically works! Not.

It causes problems when I am reading too. I am able to read a book without an audible companion. Some books are just too challenging. I attempted to read A Song of Fire and Ice without the companion but I think I managed to get to chapter two or three before I gave up.

Most of the names are hard to pronounce. In fact, I think there was not a single paragraph or page where my brain was not screaming “what the heck does that say” at me. Because you see, when I read, my internal monologue is with me too. I try to say the words in my head. But names like Daenerys and Arya are so out of the ordinary compared to what I am used to that I cannot move on.

An audiobook changes this. I can move on because the narrator pronounced it for me. However, dyslexics have very poor audio and working memory which is why I like to read and listen at the same time, or to multitask if only listening to the book. It helps me keep the information.

Other difficulties with dyslexia

Tiredness also affects my ability to read. That motion sickness feeling happens more often when I am tired. The only way I can stop that is to read when I am refreshed. It also affects my writing for the same reasons.

Additionally, I have problems with keeping my place when reading… I can read the same line a dozen times because I cannot naturally follow onto the next line. Or I can be reading the second paragraph, about to go onto the next line to find that somehow I am back on the first paragraph and then somehow, I end up on the third paragraph. A screen ruler helps prevent this from happening.

Honestly, now that I know what dyslexia is, I am surprised I was not diagnosed with it at College. But I have one now, and that is what matters.

Coping Methods for reading with Dyslexia

I use two things that help me to cope with my dyslexia when reading—probably more. The reason I say probably more is because I used one coping method before I found out I was dyslexic, and so I probably use more than I realise.

Audiobook with printed / digital book

This is the technique I used before I knew I was dyslexic. I just thought it was me being dumb or something. When I left school, I had a reading level of a twelve year old… I do not know what my reading level would now be classed as, but when I read complicated books with a lot of phonetically challenging words, I whispersync the book with the digital copy, or read and listen with the physical copy. I have been doing this for years with no real explanation as to why until my diagnosis.

However, this can come with some problems. I was trying to read and listen to Ship of Magic but where Brits pronounce fungi with a hard g sound (Fun-guy) the narrator pronounced it fun-gi with a soft g…. it was more distracting than if I read it myself.

To be fair, it is one of the only books where pronunciation has been an issue for me. But I have had issue with the dull narrator voice, or just how their voice sounds. So while this may work in many ways, there will be some books this does not work with.

Claroread

Claroread is a software that reads browsers and documents aloud. Whether that is in a software like Microsoft Word, a PDF or a web page. It turns any text into speech, and in some apps, highlights where it is reading.

I found this tool extremely useful when studying for my Masters as I was able to listen to my work and find errors. It also has a screen reader to keep your place when reading. No more reading the same paragraph over and over again.

There are other features that help people to write as well: it has a built in dictation software, mind-map software and homophone software… but more on that in another post.

Change font on e-readers and documents

Some fonts are extremely hard to read. The layout and spacing of some letters can make the motion sickness worse… or it just can blur into an unreadable mess. Changing the font to something that is more readable like arial and calibri helps. Any sans-serif font really.

Changing the size of the text also helps someone with dyslexia to look at individual words, as does increasing the line spacing if possible. I personally like 1.5 spacing. It’s not just good for teachers marking work… it really does help me read.