Supporting Employees with Dyslexia at Work

About this course.

Dyslexia is a common difference in how a person processes written language, and it says nothing about how intelligent or capable that person is. In general, non-clinical terms, it can affect reading, spelling and writing, and sometimes working memory or processing speed — for example, a person may read more slowly, find spelling effortful, lose their place in a block of text, or need longer to take in written information. Crucially, dyslexia is not a measure of intelligence or ability, and it is very often accompanied by real strengths, such as strong problem-solving, big-picture thinking, spatial reasoning and creativity. Many highly skilled tradespeople, designers and business owners are dyslexic. Understanding this is the foundation for everything else in the course, because it reframes dyslexia as a difference to accommodate rather than a deficiency to fix.

What dyslexia can affect It helps to have a plain picture of what dyslexia can involve, while remembering that it varies a great deal from person to person and that this course is not clinical. Common features described in general terms include reading more slowly or with more effort than peers; difficulty with spelling, which may be inconsistent from day to day; finding it harder to get thoughts down on paper even when those thoughts are clear and well-formed; sometimes mixing up similar-looking words or letters; and sometimes drawing more heavily on working memory, so that remembering a long spoken or written sequence — a list of steps, a string of numbers, a set of instructions — takes more effort. Some people also describe needing a little more time to process written information before responding. None of these features is universal, and a person may experience some and not others, to different degrees.