Ed Cooke said that Dyslexia is in an advantage in Memory Learning

Ed Cooke shows how his approach to memory can be helpful for all learners - but especially those, such as most Dyslexics, who think visually.

Dyslexie Free Font For your Browsers

I fund many article talking about this free add-ons for your browser that help dyslexic people to read: Dyslexie. So I decided to try Dyslexie for one month.

Dyslexie is a font created especially for people that have reading difficulty, like Dyslexia. The founder of this font is Christian Boer (1981), a graphic designer graduate from the Utrecht Art Academy of Netherlands. He come with this idea to created a font for Dyslexic as a final thesis project for his diploma. Christian a dyslexic himself, set the challenge to himself to create a font that would make reading an easy task to Dyslexic people around the world. After finished his project he decided to allows people around to access to it.

Christian mentions and applies these points to his font:

• long ascenders and descenders,
• distinction between confusable letters, e.g. b and d, though a miniature capital Q for the lower case letter is surprising.
• Capital I, lowercase l and digit 1 are distinguished.
• rounded, g but not a.
• good letter-spacing;

After trying this free Dyslexie for 1 month, I fund in it advantages and disadvantaged, but the advantages take more place than the disadvantages.

 

First the advantages I fund are:

• Make articles and text more clearly readable, event a study from The University of Twente showed that people with Dyslexia made fewer reading errors when they use Dyslexie font compared to using standard font. 
• You can read more long article without giving up, because your don't find difficulty to read it.  
• The color of the letters blue is more relaxing for the eyes, and if you like to read for a long time on your computer it doesn't hurt your eyes.  
• The add-on is user friendly interface (easy to use, simply 4 bottoms on the right side of your browser ). 

Let now show the disadvantages, I see by using this font for 1 months:

• This add-on have the tendency to slow a little bit your Internet, because it's take more time to load a websites.  
• Some web-sites don't use it.  
• And finally on a black background this is difficult to see the blue letters because the add-on don't allows us to change the color of the text.

Sources:

• http://www.dyslexiefont.com/en/dyslexia-font/extension/ 
• http://www.dyslexiefont.com/en/dyslexia-font/ 
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLtYFcHx7ec

How can you write with your Dyslexia ? (Tips for Dyslexic Writers)

Many times people ask me:  ''How can you write so well and be dyslexic ?''

The thing they don't understand it's that dyslexic people can read and write just like you with some practice and tips.


So here I give some of my personal tips to helps every Dyslexic writers in the world to write better.


1. Practice,  Practice,  Practice, and Practice reading books and writing;  learn news words,  keep a notebook,  enjoy it and never feel down or discourage when you don't know how to write something just ask and learn.  


2. Plan your writing with Bullets points.


3. Take your time,  it's important to take your time.


4. Content is the most important thing in your writing not your spelling. 


5. Write in different colors,  this can really help you.  Like me I prefer write in  red and blue this is more easy for me to read later.



6. Do some research.


7. Write Note before you put it on paper or on the computer  (bullet point note).


8. Fill your bullets points (pc),  just add more informations.

9. Don't rush, the more you rush the more mistakes you will make (take an hours or more if you want to write something very good).


10. Use technology like Microsoft corrector,  spelling check,  autocorect, detected word,...


11. Use a dyslexic font, there are several available online to buy and download. Find the one that works well for you.  They are fab and finally for me,  at least,  it has stopped the B and the P getting muddled up.


12. Write short, simple sentences.  For me I realize than when a sentence it's too long I just get lost.   So I decided to write simple sentence using subject-verb-object.   And also to keep my paragraph short as well to don't get lost. 


13. Avoid any type of Abbreviation.  Me I just cannot keep track with this when I write and I forgot if WA means weight average or something else.


14. Give your work space, like using one more space after the period.  This will help you keep in track with your essay. 


15. Read at least 4 times each sentences to see if their is a mistakes in it (read it latter not just before you write it, and correct it.  And do it also later.).

  
16. FINALLY NEVER GIVE UP, YOU CAN DO ANYTHING IF YOU WANT IT.

Stop this CAPTCHA verification, I'm not a robot, I'm just dyslexic.

This post is borne of my big frustration against CAPTCHA has dyslexic user. Once against society decided to lock us more out and make a new barrier that made it very more difficult to use web site.

Each time when you want to create an account or just write a comment on site, they want us to verify if we are human or robot using this indecipherable CAPTCHA image.

CAPTCHA is an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.”

You have to read the text, then enter the characters you see into a form. Then, and only then, can you complete the transaction, but if you're dyslexic like me and have difficulty to read event normal letter; this job become a difficult one. And some site have limitations time to try to do this and after you get block for all the days; it's happen to my often to be block after 5 times on forums.

CAPTCHAs are meant to prevent robots from spamming or overvoting or whatever it is that computer robots do in their spare time; but what if I'm not a robot but just Dyslexic. Some sites  using CAPTCHA have added an audio option, thinking this will probably makes them feel more good about helping dyslexic or blind people. But really did someone try to do it, those audio CAPTCHAs are far more difficult to do than the textural one, and some of them are just impossible!

I'm not a robot because I'm dyslexic and cannot read this CAPTCHA; Dyslexics are 'Humans'. But I doubt when they invented this they didn't think about it and didn't think this would be one of the more insulting & effective barrier to the dyslexic web user to be tell that because they cannot read this they must not be Humans. And event me sometime I give up on my registration on some web sites because of this, this make them lost many users like me.

Let take an example look at the picture belows, I'm dyslexic and I cannot for the life of god decipher the last image in the graphic, or just figure out whether the second is an U or a V or an I that is so near the first b, nor whether the fourth one is O or Q or an over sized lower case a.

And of course when you fail the first round they give you another one to do like this one bellows. The 3 one is a h or li or a 1i, I cannot figure this out and if you lose this round some site block your account for all the days till tomorrow and you get really frustrated, because they tell you that you failed the test so you're not human.

The problem with this of course, it that why they wanted to create these barriers this is simply unnecessary. This are supposed to be created to detect internet spammers, who use software bots to post advertisements, links to malicious software, or to attempt to launch denial of service attacks on web sites. Not to block dyslexic people from it or blind people.

There is other alternatives like calculus image; these are other tools that web designers can use to trap or trick the spam-bots, without creating barriers for their human users.

For me the difference between a human and a computer is simple, and should not be tested with these CAPTCHA. A computer is a robot or a machine and an human is someone that deserves to be treated with equal chances and some respect.

A petition to sign to stop these CAPTCHA TEST: http://webbism.com/2013/08/05/fighting-to-end-the-reign-of-the-captcha/

How Manga help me with my Dyslexia ?

First of all let me tell you What are manga?

This is stories told using the medium of comic, with a lots of pictures accompanying the text. However, this definition is a little to simplistic. A Manga is a medium of visual storytelling with graphic and pictures, that is originates from Japan. A Manga book is usually slightly thinner, that means that they require reader to start from the back of the book due to Japanese language being read from right to left.

A Manga can be in so many distinctive style, with large text, eyes. An anime is its a film do from a manga and that use the same artistic style.The most popular manga and anime in the world was Pokemon or Dragon Balls. 

Some people assume that manga is only for children because of the success of children's cartoon, like Digimon, and possibly due to the cuteness appearance of some manga characters. This is not the case, people of all ages can read manga, and it covers a wide variety of topics like: action-adventure, romance, sports and games, historical drama, comedy, science fiction and fantasy, mystery, suspense, detective, horror, sexuality, and business/commerce, among others. Likewise, some other people when they think of comic or manga only think of superhero or geek reading but this is far from the truth, and it's come to same thing has judging all books based on one genre, such as magical or horror.


Let me show you some example of Manga bellows: 

 

Remember Manga are read right to left (This Death Note and Welcome to The NHK)

Now let tell you more about How Manga help me with my Dyslexia ?

If you have read my previous post you all know that being dyslexic means you have problem at reading and with letter.  What is great about Manga is that there is pictures to help me will I'm reading, that really help me has a reader to keep in track with the plot event when I'm struggling with some words and letter. For me the fact that there is less text to read per page make this less hard for me to read with my Dyslexia and allow me to keep focus and also to finish these books much more faster that with normal novel. I remember myself starting reading novel and having so much problems with world, and how the text is little that I totally give up, but with the larger characters and the pictures in Manga this never happen. This help me boost my confidence has a reader, and make me fall in love with the interest of reading books against.

Dyslexic people like me struggle sometime to remember some details of the stories so like me they lost the focus and give up, but because of the pictures and designs in manga this rarely happen. Also the effort of reading some words make it so hard to understand their meaning at the same time. For me, I realize that I have so much better memory with picture than sounds and words. I also have some trouble remembering names but never faces, and place. This means for me book which use pictures are as well more accessible for me to read than the one that only have text.

Finally Mangas, are so much more fun and interesting to read than novel, because most of them are based on popular Anime or TV Shows. I would like to recommend every Dyslexic or People that hate reading to start reading Manga this can give you the like of reading again. 

Some Resources:

1. A Research about how Manga and Comic help Dyslexic: http://design-cu.jp/iasdr2013/papers/1259-1b.pdf
2.  Some free websites to start with Manga: http://www.mangareader.net/ http://beta.mangafox.com/ http://www.mangahere.com/