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Specialist Support from Learning Services

What is Dyslexia? 

  • The word 'dyslexia' comes from the Greek and simply means 'difficulty with words'.
  • Dyslexic people often have strong visual, creative and problem solving skills and are prominent among entrepreneurs, inventors, architects, engineers and in the arts and entertainment world.
  • Many famous and successful people are dyslexic.
  • It is a life- long, usually genetic, inherited condition and affects around 10% of the population.
  • Dyslexia occurs in people of all races, backgrounds and abilities, and the effect varies from person to person.
  • Dyslexia does not affect intelligence.
  • Dyslexia is about information processing: dyslexic people may find it hard to process and remember things they see and hear. This can affect learning and literacy skills.
  • Dyslexia is one of a family of Specific Learning Difficulties. There are related conditions, such as dyspraxia, dyscalculia and attention deficit disorder, and people may have a combination of both.

How it feels to be Dyslexic.

‘I see things from a different perspective.’

‘I can come up with solutions no one else has thought of and I think fast on my feet.’

‘When I am reading, occasionally a passage will get all jumbled up, but when it happens I have to read and re-read the passage over again.

‘I know what I want to say, but I can never find the right words.’

‘In formal situations, although I know what I want to say, I struggle, lose focus and then my mind goes blank and I panic.'

‘I have the right ideas, but I can’t get them down on paper.’

‘It’s like my computer crashing with too much information!’

‘Sometimes when I am being told what to do, the words I hear get all jumbled up in my mind and I just can’t take in what is being said to me.’

‘In general conversation with family, friends and colleagues they usually accept that I tend to ramble, forget and repeat,…. because that’s part of me’.

 

You can find out more about Dyslexia from the following organisations  

Dyslexia Action 

British Dyslexia Association

 

What is Dyspraxia?

People who have dyspraxia often find the routine tasks of daily life such as driving, household chores, cooking and grooming difficult. They can also find coping at work is hard. People with dyspraxia usually have a combination of problems, including:

  • Poor balance. Difficulty in riding a bicycle, going up and down hills
  • Poor posture and fatigue. Difficulty in standing for a long time as a result of weak muscle tone. Floppy, unstable round the joints. Some people with dyspraxia may have flat feet
  • Poor manipulative skills. Difficulty with typing, handwriting and drawing. May have a poor pen grip, press too hard when writing and have difficulty when writing along a line
  • May talk continuously and repeat themselves. Some people with dyspraxia have difficulty with organising the content and sequence of their language
  • Tracking. Difficulty in following a moving object smoothly with eyes without moving head excessively. Tendency to lose the place while reading
  • Little sense of time, speed, distance or weight. Leading to difficulties driving, cooking
  • Inadequate sense of direction. Difficulty distinguishing right from left means map reading skills are poor
  • Over-sensitive to light
  • Difficulty in distinguishing sounds from background noise. Tendency to be over-sensitive to noise
  • Difficulty in planning and organising thought
  • Poor memory, especially short-term memory. May forget and lose things
  • Difficulty in listening to people, especially in large groups. Can be tactless, interrupt frequently. Problems with team work
  • Tend to get stressed, depressed and anxious easily
  • May have difficulty sleeping

 

How it feels to be Dyspraxic?

Follow the links to read about people's different experiences with dyspraxia.

 

I have dyspraxia and noone ever knows what it is, by Imogen Goulden

Being Dyspraxic by Scott Forster 
What is it like to be dyspraxic

 

You can find out more about Dyspraxia at the Dyspraxia Foundation website

Dyspraxia Foundation