Steve McCue refers to the blog by Paul Ross.
Paul Ross asked the question in his blog. How far has dyslexia come since the 1970s? This was my response.
What would yours be?
This is my response to Steve McCue’s response J
‘We still
do not have an agreed single definition for dyslexia. There is too much focus
on the medical model, our dyslexic brain is broken, we need to be cured and
remediated deficit model of dyslexia.’
I agree with this statement. I do not think that this is a ‘fault’. We
have created a society in which political and economic success is dependent for
most people on the ease with which they can access text. Or rather the way that
the text is presented to them in the text books, examinations, official forms etc.
Only two centuries ago in the UK, most people had few demands for
literacy on them it hardly affected them. Then as printing got cheaper and we
moved through industrialisation the control of literacy over people’s life
chances really expanded and with it the need for literacy based education.
Before the general use of computers started to really develop about 20
years ago, this was always printed materials and the printers/publishers
tailored the fonts and font size to match their markets.
The markets for reading material were those who could read effectively,
small fonts and white backgrounds.
Different printed products were targeted at different markets. For example, the ‘upmarket heavy newspapers,
targeted at the ‘higher socioeconomic groups, who had been successful in school
systems where the information was presented in small fonts on pages of crowded
text. For these people larger fonts
would have been more difficult with fewer words ending upon each printed page.
The newspapers and books would have been heavier and more paper needed. In addition there had developed an
association in the minds of the population that larger fonts were somehow
‘childlike’, suitable for people with low ability or visually impaired.
Newspapers targeted at an audience with a lower level of educational
success....’The Tabloids’ used larger fonts, smaller sentences and less text/more
pictures. The stories were and remain less intellectually demanding.
These ‘negative’ associations actually seem to inhibit adults from using
a larger font even when they already know that they need it and despite experiencing
difficulties with the usual small fonts,
The way that the small fonts also usually need high light intensity to
process, also seems to have influenced the tendency to use whiter and whiter
paper over the years.
The best readers
usually seem to read best on the whiter papers, with the most contrast together
of course with small fonts.
Most dyslexic adults who I know find the older books and papers with the
darker paper easier to read from. The popularity of the Kindle, with its grey
background may be partly accounted for by this.
The use of printed materials also makes the grey/white background
‘normal’. There was no choice. So really until around 1998 with Microsoft Word
no one really studied in detail the effect of background. Any consideration being through the use of
coloured glasses or overlays from a limited palette. A very hit and miss
approach with often confusing outcomes.
The computer screen allows very precise and objective measurement of any
changes in reading performance.
‘Still too many dyslexic kids are
being let down by an education system that fails to teach them in ways they can
access the learning that takes place in schools.’
I find this an interesting perspective. Let’s avoid the term ‘dyslexic ‘for
a moment and consider the way people who
find reading difficult are let down.
When all text was presented printed on paper there was very little choice. Ina previous post I have compared this as a
similar situation to being a sportsperson in a world where only elastic size 8 shoes
were available.
Different people would be the champions.
It would be a stupid world. If
your feet were smaller than 8, then you would get sore feet when you ran, would
never run far, be very unwilling to train and never get really fit.
If your feet were larger than 8, you would squeeze in because of the
elasticity but your speed and training would again be limited.
The great thing about a computer screen is that it is easy to fit the
text to your eyes and your visual system, just like a shoe can be fitted to
your feet.
This is a simplistic view of the situation but is valid way of thinking
about the history of reading and reading difficulty.
It is not just about the eyes, it is the way the visual data is
processed, limitations on that processing and then the way the associations
between visual data and phonological data are processed. There are issues of
working memory, auditory problems, phonological problems, possibly cerebellum problems,
these will affect the efficiency with which the eyes collect the visual data on
which the system is based, in that it is where the muscle tone controlling that
collection is centred. The work on the likely
role of the Magnocellular system and its biochemistry and histology is central
to both the visual data collection and its temporal and spatial processing, the
way the information is coordinated and collated. The extent of demand on the
central executive and its relationship with working memory, short term memory
and long term memory; but we are only really in this 21st century
just starting to make sense of all the components and the ways they interact.
Virtually all of the brilliant neurobiology research pertaining to
reading that is going on now has only become possible because of the
development of IT, computing and electronics.
We can now collect huge amounts of data and process it in seconds. Before this era it was a slow laborious task.
One world leading researcher I was talking with 10 years ago commented that he
could probably conducted his lifetime of research in a few weeks if he had had
a computer and modern electronics!
As our culture has become more and more dependent on text we make more
and more literacy demands on each other. Virtually all employment requires
functional literacy and better. In the last century, certainly before the
1980’s it was relatively easy to survive economically and educationally by
avoiding text. Not true now.
‘There are still too
many dyslexics in our prisons because they have been failed by the education
system.’
I agree with this statement, although even when pupils are identified as
dyslexic, most interventions in the past had any real benefit. Very few
teachers had any idea what to do. Actually in Cambridgeshire in the 1970’s it
was almost forbidden to use the word. I
was actually told off once for suggesting that a student might be dyslexic. There seemed to be a fear that it might mean too
much ‘money was needed to help’. In retrospect, many of the students who I am
confident would have got more appropriate help now, were marginalised and I can
imagine the temptations to be outside the law, in the way they were almost
pushed outside of ‘society’
The review by Dr
Michael Rice with Professor Greg Brooks of the NRDC (The National
Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy in the UK), published in May 2004 is the classic work on this subject.
‘Developmental dyslexia in adults: a research review’
This review was very badly received by ‘the dyslexia
Industry’ when it was published... I recommend that everyone interested in this
subject reads it with an open mind.
It is an exhaustive study which questions many of
the ideas almost ‘faiths’ associated with dyslexia.
Myths are in a sense really concerned with the
seeking of answers of understanding in an area which is complex and then
feeling comfortable with the level of understanding you have reached. They
involve rejection of ideas and people appearing to conflict with your own set
of beliefs. These are subliminal rejection, not intentional but they help in
reinforcing your own model or explanation of an idea such as ‘dyslexia’. Each
person believes/knows that their ideas are the correct one. They know ‘the
truth’.
‘There is still too much misinformation and too many incorrect myths
surrounding dyslexia.’
Quite true. (I think!!).
The idea that boys are more clumsy and
disruptive than girls and boys more likely to be dyslexic.
People who write letter reversals b p, for example are more likely to be
dyslexic.
Left handed people are more likely to be
dyslexic
What is probably true is that these
people are more likely to be ‘labelled as /diagnosed as dyslexic; in that
anecdotally there appears to be an association with poor reading skills. Now
that does appear to me to be true. These
people have other issues that result in them being ‘noticed’ as having problems
‘In most schools all
dyslexic kids learn to be /are failures’.
They get marginalised, often, I think,
because they cannot ‘perform’ at the level expected of them.
They get told off, but do not really
understand why.
Slow, lazy, easily distracted, clumsy,
messy and many other negative attributes.
‘I am
dyslexic and a dyslexia specialist.....I believe that dyslexia is not a
disability that it is a difference and that it is society that disables us. I
believe in the social model of dyslexia. Dyslexia is a result of our evolution
and as such reflects human diversity. Thus dyslexia is a difference not a
disability. That all kids in school have the right to be learn and achieve
according to their potential. This disabling begins in school where we are not
taught in ways we can access the learning effectively. Of course there are some
great dyslexia friendly schools, colleges and universities out there but they
are far and few between.’
I actually agree closely with Steve on most
of this but that is also true of many other disabilities. A friend of mine, the late David Morris, was
actively involved in disability rights throughout his adult life. Dave was
because of physical disability, severely restricted in his mobility, but he saw
his disability in terms of ‘barriers’ each of which needed reducing or removing
to enable maximum access. He and colleagues and friends worked tirelessly to
these ends.
In the case of Dave, his disability had
a clear medical/genetic origin. Dyslexia is a far more complex concept. In
different countries and cultures the manifestation of the symptoms to some
extent reflect the written language characteristics, alphabetic versus
ideographic and in alphabetic languages, the extent of opacity, the extremes
being such as Finnish ( Transparent ) English (Opaque) The research on the genetics
associated with persons identified as dyslexic, reported at the Oxford-Kobe
Symposium, demonstrated that this approach, was almost too complicated to
utilise in barrier reduction, to a very large extent because ‘dyslexia’ itself
as a ‘cobweb’ concept .In that it
manifests itself in so many ways, the phenotype is almost indefinable.
Let me give you two examples at the
extreme.
1. When I was teaching, I had the pleasure of working with a
pupil, who at the age of 10 in the early 1980’s had been diagnosed as dyslexic
by people at the Dyslexia Institute ( Now dyslexia Action). His mother who was
financially limited struggled to pay for his attendance at weekly sessions to
teach him ‘coping strategies’ and attempts to help him learn to spell, develop
his working memory ( Kim’s Game if I remember
correctly) Nothing seemed to have any
effect.
At secondary school he
was given extensive special needs support but from my knowledge NOBODY informed
his teachers that he had been identified as dyslexic. Nobody went out of their
way, as far as I or he remembered to remove or lower any barriers. What did
happen was that his lively character, willingness to discuss, and argue got
associated with all of the negative labels experienced by most of the dyslexic students I
see at universities He was marginalised, excluded repeatedly, but remarkably
remained affable.
At no time did he
remember support staff or dyslexia specialists ever suggest he have his vision
tested. But then Dyslexia is nothing to do with vision...is it???????? He did
have a ‘strange eye' though! Partly that caused him even more marginalisation
In 2001 I had just
started to use the binocular eye tracker, We had worked out our original
algorithm to optimise computer screens for students and I persuaded (not much
was needed we had collaborated at the IOO) Anita Lightstone, the Low Vision
chief at the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) to demonstrate what
could be done in front of Prof Alistair Fielder a leading researcher associated
with the RNIB.
I tracked down my ex-student
and persuaded him to accompany me to London and be taken through the procedures
in front of Professor Fielder and Anita. It was a matter of trust on his part.
He did not know what I was going to do or why. A brave man, he was offered a
trip to London and a good curry afterwards in exchange for his cooperation!
Eventually Prof Fielder
did turn up and the demonstration began.
Let’s call my ‘guinea
pig’...A…. On the eyetracker it was
clear that one eye was totally suppressed, for whatever reason. His other eye
was at most allowing the processing of two characters per fixation. The apparently
wild movements of the suppressed eye appeared to be ‘tugging’ at the ‘good eye’
resulting in lots of head movement as he struggled to read.
At the conclusion of
the optimisation both eyes were moving together and he was actually reading
rather fluently much to his own surprise, and started to talk excitedly about
what he had experienced.
The Professor dismissed
the eyetracking information and the change in reading performance as being of
no interest. ‘A’ stood up and in a very clear statement, which I will not
report in full, turned to the Professor.
‘You might think it is
of no interest but it is of ***************interest to me, reading has really
************ ** my life’; added a few
more choice bits and stormed out to the Pub where I met him later.
Appropriate
intervention to reduce /remove barriers had not been available to him before.
Inappropriate intervention had been tried and reinforced his sense of failure
and alienation.
2. My second example
concerns a mathematics student at a leading UK university, having attended a,
very expensive, public school he had achieved 3 Grade A Advanced level grades.
He had had all the
support his father could afford. He knew he was clever, he had been told so.
The school had used every available way of minimising the barriers, with extra 1:1
tuition, extra time for his examinations, scribes when necessary. He was very
articulate, very logical, an excellent mathematician. But if he had to read a
block of text it was slow, faltering. He had had virtually no social life
because it took him so long to read /study anything.
His father brought him
into Westminster Access Centre 6o find out what we were going to do. An hour
later, the student was laughing and reading fluently. He had a piece of ‘magic
plastic’ and a setting for his computer screen. As a mathematician, he had
followed the logic and he now felt in charge, empowered. His father sat there
in disbelief and took out his calculator. After a few minutes his comment was.
‘I have spent over
£45,000 on this in the last few years and this was it! A bit of plastic and a
coloured computer screen!
Ok so these are two
examples when what I do worked really well but it was only possible because of
computers screens and the ability to calculate with millions of numbers in a
few seconds. It would have been impossible to control the parameters
controlling the image and calculate and analyse the outcomes without a computer.
But in the real world
there is not equal access. With other ‘dyslexic’ people it may not work as
effectively, there may be other factors that are limiting their reading performance
that need dealing with as Steve says below.
‘Yes we have accessible technology that some dyslexics can
use to enable them to overcome literacy barriers. But they are not a panacea
and do not work for everyone. More to the point the high cost of this software
makes it inaccessible in terms of cost for many dyslexics’.
As I wrote above not
everyone gets access to accessible technology in addition some of the ‘accessible
technology’ can be in itself be limiting..
An example here is text to speech
technology. Learning is far more accessible if this is used in conjunction with
maximised access to the text visually Visual processing assistance in conjunction
with text to speech software would be synergistic.
If yo look at a lot of ‘accessibility
options’ on computers they themselves are often written with very small fonts
and are in themselves inaccessible. The instructions you get when you actually
find them are often again, very complex and in small fonts excluding from the
start many people who could make use of them.
We really need the default screen settings to be more accessible in the
first place and easy to navigate. A better ‘User experience’!
In addition I rarely find any actual
auditing of the benefits of much accessibility technology. It is a
multi-million pound industry with a lot of ‘box-shifting’.
‘Yes
dyslexia has a little higher profile now but in the main it’s a quite negative
profile that focuses on what we do struggle to do. But we are just like
everyone else out there in the non dyslexic world. We do struggle with some
things but we can excel in others. Dyslexia is a difference not a disability
and it’s a difference that needs to be embraced, nurtured and encouraged from
day one in school.’
Now this makes absolute
sense except that I actually think of dyslexia as being ‘many differences’ to take
a word from my true love…biology …it is truly ‘polymorphic’!
