Did you know that around 1 in 10 people have dyslexia? The chances are that you will be working someone who has it. Dyslexia comes with it’s own strengths and difficulties, by being aware of them you will be ready to support your colleagues. Of course we are all different and not all of these tips will help every individual with dyslexia, on the other hand, many of these tips will also benefit neurotypical colleagues.
Be kind
An adult with dyslexia has spent years as a child with dyslexia in a school system that is not designed for them. Every day they were told that reading and writing were the only skills that mattered and that they would never be good enough. Imagine working really hard on a piece of work with great ideas only to be told that the spelling isn’t up to scratch or you’ve made a grammatical error. Imagine that this has happened to you time and time again and now you can understand why many dyslexic adults dislike having their spelling and grammar corrected.
Bearing this in mind, ask yourself “does this really matter?” before correcting a colleagues mistake. Of course in some situations it does matter. In this case you can show support for your colleague by commenting on the content of the document before you give the corrections. If someone has come up with a really creative pitch and then misspelled a few words they will respond much better if you acknowledge their good work before you hit them with a list of corrections!
Whenever you aren’t sure if you should point out errors, try asking your colleague. This will make them feel that you value them and their ideas, setting you up for a more productive conversation. This applies to anyone, regardless of dyslexia.
Support with reading
Reading can be especially difficult for your colleagues with dyslexia, they might be concentrating so hard on the mechanics of reading that they are unable to fully understand the meaning of a text. Bearing that in mind here are a few tips that will make it easier for your dyslexic colleagues to read, giving them more brain power left for developing insight into what they have read.
- Don’t force a college to read something out loud unless they volunteer. Reading out loud is even more difficult that reading silently as you now have an extra task (pronouncing the words) to manage.
- Allow plenty of time. Where possible send text in advance so that everyone can read at their own pace without feeling pressured or publicly embarrassed.
- Where possible let people read on a screen where they can set the font, text size, background colour etc. Could you let your colleague take a laptop into that meeting and read notes from it?
- If you must print text, print it in narrow columns, with generous line spacing and a san serif font such as Calibri or Arial.
- Read important information out loud, that way you can be sure that everyone has understood it.
By Anna Granta