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Dyslexia Awareness Week 2024

Dyslexia Awareness Week 2024 takes place from Monday 7th October to Sunday 13th October. The theme for this year is #DAW24: ‘What’s your story?’ It’s a week dedicated to increasing understanding and support for people with dyslexia and raising awareness about the challenges faced by people with dyslexia and advocate for better understanding, resources, and accommodations.

Dyslexia – an “invisible” learning difficulty 

Sadly, dyslexia is so often overlooked, despite its huge impact on learning and daily life. Some reasons for this are the fact that dyslexia is an “invisible” learning difficulty; it doesn’t have physical symptoms or obvious outward signs. Students with dyslexia often appear to function normally in many areas, and their academic failures are often seen as a lack of effort or intelligence, rather than recognising it as a specific learning difficulty. This often results in delayed diagnosis. Students with dyslexia often develop strong compensating strategies, such as relying on memory or verbal skills to cope with their reading difficulties and are often labelled as having behavioural issues. 

Many people do not fully grasp the profound effects dyslexia can have on a student’s academic and emotional well-being. Dyslexia affects not just reading but also impairs writing, spelling, maths, and also self-esteem. 

Dyslexia Awareness Week 2024 ‘What’s your story?’

How CENMAC supports students with dyslexia

At CENMAC, we use Assistive Technology to help students with dyslexia to help them overcome challenges related to reading, writing, and processing language, making learning more accessible and manageable. Here are some key ways that assistive technology is useful:

Text-to-speech software converts written text into spoken words, allowing students to hear the material while following along visually. This improves understanding and retention of information, as students with dyslexia often struggle with decoding text.

Speech-to-text software allows students to speak their thoughts instead of writing, helping them express ideas without being hindered by spelling or grammar difficulties.

Spell check and grammar tools provide corrections and suggestions, which are especially helpful for students who find spelling and sentence structure challenging.

Mind-mapping tools help students organise their thoughts and ideas. These tools are particularly useful for structuring essays or breaking down complex tasks into manageable chunks.

Reducing Cognitive Overload on students by minimising the needs for a reader or a scribe, thereby allowing them to focus on higher-level tasks such as critical thinking or content analysis.

Boosting Confidence and Independence by using technology to handle tasks that are typically difficult for them helps students feel more independent and confident in their abilities. They can work at their own pace without constantly relying on others for help.

Mindmap using Inspiration software

Case Studies

Student L

Student L is an amazing young woman! She is bright, articulate, and an engaging student with excellent verbal and conversational and communication skills

She was diagnosed  in 2018 with significant cognition and learning needs and specific literacy difficulties, including being severely dyslexic. When asked to read a short passage during the assessment, she became visibly anxious and demonstrated significant problems with decoding simple words. She was reluctant to use some technology due in part to a desire to belong and not be seen as different. Student L was very worried about being seen as weak.

In 2022 Student L was loaned an OrCam Read by CENMAC. This is a handheld device that reads any text aloud, from newspapers and emails to road signs. It is discreet to use and can be used with Bluetooth Earbuds making it less conspicuous.

After several sessions of training, she now uses this confidently and regularly to support her learning. She uses it in some lessons but mainly to support her work at home. As a severely dyslexic user, Student L feels that it has become completely invaluable to her, and she would not be able to achieve in the way that she has without it. She intends to use it in her exams, and access arrangements have already been organised. When asked about how she feels about using it she said: “It has changed my life.”

OrCam Read

Student S

Student S has faced a great deal of adversity and through sheer tenacity, she has overcome many hurdles.  She was diagnosed with severe dyspraxia and dyslexia when in primary school. Student S could not take notes in class when in secondary school.

When she began college, she was asked how she felt that having assistive technology would help her. Student S said that she wanted to be able to get her ideas down on paper.  She felt that she had a lot of knowledge but forgot what she was trying to say before she could write her ideas down.

CENMAC provided her with a laptop, and she was shown the range of assistive technology available on Microsoft 365 (Immersive Reader) and Microsoft Voice Dictation. Student S was extremely keen to try these and felt it would make a significant difference to her life chances.   

Student S also wanted to be able to read better and was lent a Scanning C-Pen. She can use it confidently and fluently and she reported that she finds it invaluable for accessing her lesson resources, and when food shopping to help her to read labels on tins and packets. The Reader Pen also helps her to access reading materials for research to help her with her studies.

Microsoft Immersive Reader

Scanning Pens C-Pen

Student R

Student R is an engaging and verbally articulate young man. He has cerebral palsy and is a wheelchair user. His cerebral palsy restricts his ability to write, and he becomes tired very easily. This has a negative effect on his fine motor skills and eye coordination. He finds gripping a pen very difficult, so writing is hard for him.

Student R also has a diagnosis of dyslexia. He can communicate his thoughts and ideas in an articulate way and engages well in class in group discussions. Verbally Student R can use excellent vocabulary and phrases.  However, when it came to recording his thoughts in writing, he became frustrated, and this was manifested by poor behaviour, and he was falling severely behind with his studies. Student R lives with his mother (who is also severely dyslexic) and so would regularly not complete his homework.

CENMAC loaned Student R a Microsoft Surface Pro which he can transport easily with his wheelchair. Student R’s screen is configured to black background with white writing. Student R said this makes it easier to see the words. Student R uses Immersive Reader to support his research by turning web pages into dyslexia friendly pages, by changing the font, letter size and background colour. He uses the Read Aloud facility to read documents and web pages. He uses Microsoft Voice to Text to get his ideas down quickly to support his writing as appropriate in lessons. He also sometimes uses it in lessons to record the teacher and then uses the notes for revision.    

This year, he has started a Level 2 Vocational Qualification at college and continues to use his assistive technology to support his learning.  

Microsoft Surface Pro

Find out more about dyslexia

We have complied some useful information to help support people with dyslexia including a short video, links to useful information and training recordings.

> Access the resources

 

Blog author: This blog was written by CENMAC Advisory Teacher Maureen De Longhi.

Image courtesy of Nessy. Image illustrates how a person with dyslexia might interpret the word “word”, as “morb”.