Debunking the Myths about Dyslexia

I'm sick of hearing this all the time, enough is enough. There is just to much misconceptions and myths surrounding the disorder. There are several myths regarding dyslexia. I have highlighted some of the more common ones.

Smart people cannot be Dyslexic or learning disability.
Facts: Dyslexia and intelligence are Not connected. Many dyslexic like Dominic O Brien, Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, and many have proof that this is false. Many dyslexic individuals are very bright and creative, because they found a ways to surpass their learning disability.  

Dyslexia doesn't exist.
Facts:  Dyslexia is not only real, and is one of the most common learning disabilities to affect children.

Dyslexia is rare.
Facts: NIH research has shown that dyslexia affects 20%, or 1 in every 5 people. Dyslexia is one of the most common cause of reading difficulties in elementary school children because only 1 in 10 dyslexics.


Dyslexia is very uncommon.
Facts:  There is between 20% - 15% of the USA population are affect by it.

Dyslexia can be outgrown.
Facts: Yes you can learn method to live with it, reading method or writing methods like me. Dyslexia is a lifelong issue. Although many dyslexics learn to read accurately they may continue to read slowly and not automatically.

People with dyslexia cannot read.
Fact: Incorrect. Most children and adults with dyslexia are able to read, even if it is at a basic level. Children with dyslexia are likely to reach a certain point in reading ability with the inability to move beyond a 3rd-grade reading level. Despite being taught phonics, they will have extreme difficulty sounding out an unknown word. Spelling is one of the classic red flags alerting parents and teachers of a serious underlying problem. The children are unable to understand the basic code of the English language and cannot break down or reconstruct (with spelling) words using codes (letters).

Dyslexic children will never read well, so it’s best to teach them to compensate.
Fact: Individuals with dyslexia can become terrific readers with the appropriate intervention. It is important to test a child early in his/her school career in order to identify any problems and attempt to prevent major reading difficulties before they even start.

Every child who struggles with reading is dyslexic.
Fact: Dyslexia is the most common cause of difficulties with reading, but it is by no means the only cause. Dyslexia does not only cause difficulties in reading but also in spelling, speech, and memorization. If a child is dyslexic, he will show other warning signs besides having trouble with reading.

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