I am dyslexic. This caused me a lot of problems in school and early life. In adulthood, I started to develop coping and learning strategies. I worked out how to redesign the world so that it made more sense to me. Having spent the majority of my working life self-employed and, as a trainer, designing my own materials, I have been able to work to my own agenda and control my environment.
Over the last year, I’ve been writing a book for a well known academic publisher. Thirty year’s of learning strategies went out of the window as I found stuff coming at me in vast quantities from all directions. The brainstorm of editorial feedback was like carpet bombing on my brain; a terrifying, mind-numbing cacophony. It took a long time to switch off all the interference, one way of which was to hide all track changes.
Dyslexia comes in many shapes and sizes for different people and my own particular brand involves difficulties with short term memory, information processing and cross-referencing. Basically, there just seems too much to think about; then of course, there a regular problems relating to fonts and point size. I’d forgotten about this until I received a text in Times New Roman that looked like a dense forest of thorny, rapidly growing rose bushes!
So this is the bad news but what about the gift? Generally, I find things really difficult or really easy. Years ago in a computer class I once completed a critical path analysis flow chart in about two minutes when the rest of the group took half an hour - I couldn’t understand why because I saw the complete path in one snap shot vision and just had to spend the two minutes actually creating it.
I can write an audio script in one simple writing as if I’m just copying a dictation and I learnt to play musical instruments without tuition very easily. I play guitar and keyboards; I don’t look when I’m playing as that would only confuse me; playing in the dark is best of all. Naturally, I don’t read music but can hear a tune and play it more or less straight away.
We, (dyslexics) inhabit a parallel universe; sometimes we can see you, (non-dyslexics) and even hear you but often it’s like someone talking under water. Whether it’s you or us who are under water is not clear.
I’ve never wanted to make a big deal about it or use it as an excuse but the recent writing project made me realise that there are a few things that might be helpful to all.
From the dyslexic point of view - make it clear that you are dyslexic and this may require some adaptations by the people you are working with.
Take control of your learning and express the communication channels and processes that you need - because otherwise, it will be very frustrating for everybody.
From the employer, editor or other party perspective, please use non ornate fonts such as Arial and minimum 12pt. Don’t crowd pages with information. Keep stuff simple - don’t be ambiguous, provide context and reason but briefly and specifically. Sometimes what is obvious to you may take us ages to grasp and things that seem complex, quickly understood.
Basically, we need to talk about it and make a plan.
From an employer’s perspective you will find that the pay-off of employing and getting the best out of a dyslexic employee an be enormous. Very often, we are gifted with original insights, creativity, prolific production and determination - not a bad package.
We just both have to tune into the same frequency.
Here’s a great video.
If you have any experiences or thoughts you’d like to share on this subject, I’d be very interested to hear them.
