Is Your Organization Dyslexia Aware?

How dyslexia aware are you?

That may sound like a strange question. After all, everyone knows what dyslexia is, right? You probably know a few people in your office of friendship circle who have it. However, the signs and symptoms of dyslexia are not universal and vary in severity. So it is, in fact, very possible to be dyslexia unaware without even realizing it.

Dyslexia Awareness Week runs from October 5th to October 11th, 2021. So there’s no better time to delve a little deeper into the background and realities of dyslexia – what it is, what it means, and what can be done to support people with dyslexia in the workplace and their studies.

What Exactly is Dyslexia?

Most people know that dyslexia is a lifelong learning difficulty that affects reading, writing, and spelling. However, many people think it only concerns mixing up the order of letters in words, resulting in spelling mistakes in written work and difficulty reading aloud. But there’s a bit more to it than that.

Dyslexia affects the area of the brain that processes language. So it’s not just about written letters. It’s also about identifying speech sounds and decoding them in relation to letters and words. It takes much more time for dyslexics to break words down into symbols and then match them to the right sounds, so sometimes, even listening to words is challenging in terms of comprehension.

Dyslexia Signs and Symptoms

Because it takes more effort to process written information, people with dyslexia are slower at reading and writing than others. But why? What specific problems do they encounter that make processing words harder? Here are a few examples:

• Obstacles in quickly identifying letters and their associated sounds.

• Difficulty remembering whole words by sight – especially longer words or words that don’t sound like they are spelled (for example, yacht, cupboard, and colonel).

• Putting similar letters the wrong way round (for example, b, d, and p).

• Trouble distinguishing between homophones, which are words that sound the same but are spelled differently (for example, there, their, and they’re).

It is particular issues like these that cause inconsistent spelling and slow reading times.

How Many People Have Dyslexia?

This is the million-dollar question! The NHS estimates that 10% of the population has dyslexia, while Yale suggests that the actual figure is closer to 20%. The truth is, we can’t really say with certainty. Because some people have very mild forms, they are not diagnosed until adulthood – and it’s also very possible that some people with dyslexia are never diagnosed at all. But, for the sake of the argument, let’s go with 15%. That’s around 700 million people worldwide.

What we do know is that dyslexia is the most common learning difficulty, accounting for 80-90% of all diagnosed learning disorders. Other learning difficulties include dyspraxia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, and hyperlexia.

Does Dyslexia Affect Intelligence?

In short, no. Dyslexia is not a marker of intelligence as it is a learning difficulty, not a learning disability. In fact, dyslexics often have well above average skills in creative thinking, analytics, and problem-solving. Did you know that some of the greatest minds and most successful entrepreneurs were/are dyslexic? Examples include:

• Winston Churchill
• Richard Branson
• Albert Einstein
• Theo Paphitis
• George Washington
• Steven Spielberg

Employing for Diversity

Far from being a negative factor, many employers are now actively recruiting neurodiverse candidates with dyslexia. Critical thinking skills are sought after in some of the world’s biggest industries and are particularly useful in sectors like IT, architecture, design, fashion, science, medicine, etc. Just a few global organizations to be vocal about employing diversity include:

• Microsoft
• Goldman Sachs
• GCHQ Intelligence Agency
• Ernst & Young