Dyslexia primarily affects the skills involved in reading and spelling accurately and fluently.
There is more than one kind of dyslexia, it occurs across the range of intellectual abilities and is best thought of as a continuum.
Dyslexia can often run in families, with some people born with it and others developing it later in life, sometimes as a result of damage to the brain.
People with dyslexia can find things such as phonological awareness (recognising and working with sounds in spoken language), verbal memory and verbal processing speed more difficult. Around one in ten people have a form of dyslexia.
I have a high vocabulary and quite high on the IQ score, but when it comes to getting it onto paper, I find that really difficult.
Strengths and talents of people with dyslexia
People with dyslexia often have particular abilities in:
- Being especially approachable, compassionate and understanding, empathetic to what’s going on for others and taking time to understand different points of view.
- Relating well to other people and fostering strong relationships.
- Taking more time and being much more thorough at reading or writing notes or documents, often spotting things that others haven’t.
- Thinking about things differently and problem solving, being able to see the bigger picture.
- Being able to visualise something and articulate it verbally in a way that’s understood, helping people engage with ideas or concepts.
- Being organised and creating order.
- Creativity, innovation and being hands-on, working flexibly and adaptably.
- Great short term memory.
Other traits
People with dyslexia may also find that they:
- Spell or read words incorrectly, or don’t identify when something has been autocorrected to a different word.
- Sometimes struggle to think of the right words to say or write to express themselves.
- Find it difficult to take in lots of instructions without breaking it down.
- Lack confidence in their abilities, especially anything perceived to be academic.
Non-urgent advice: CUH staff tell us
- We can find reading black on white or white on black difficult, so having colour themes or screen overlays can really help.
- Many of us struggled at school and, depending on our age, received varying levels of support. Some of us feel we are missing the basics that others learnt at a young age because there was less of an understanding of dyslexia when we were at school, or we might not have been diagnosed until much later in adulthood.
- It would help us and probably lots of other staff be more productive if we had easy access to dictation and read aloud software.
- There can still be stigma attached to being dyslexic and not spelling words correctly, especially working at a more senior level.
- We often don’t want to rock the boat or seem difficult by asking for things that would help. Sometimes it’s easier to pretend we’re not dyslexic.
- We have our own little work around for things, especially if we’ve grown up with dyslexia and developed our own strategies.
- We often put in lots more hours than our colleagues to make sure our work is of the same standard.
- We might need more time to be able to complete assignments if we’re undertaking any study or educational programme.
- Working from home or virtually has sometimes made things even more challenging.
- We can help our patients come up with strategies because we have developed our own informal strategies.
- The working environments can make things more difficult – whether the brightness of the lights, availability of computers, or the noise of works going on nearby. We often work late to compensate.
- The way dyslexia presents can fluctuate from day to day.