What is it like to be dyslexic?

Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurological in origin. There are many other learning disabilities affecting concentration, visual, audial abilities. This is not to be confused with actual intelligence potential. Many of those who suffer from learning disabilities are well above average intelligence. Also, many are extremely talented and use their talents to compensate and succeed.

In workshops for teachers and parents, there are all sorts of techniques to show us how words and letters look to those with "visual disabilities." Nowadays you don't have to go any further than your computer to feel dyslexic.

Many of us bloggers have set up "word verification" to screen out spammers from our comments. In order to send comments to blogs one must type in a series of letters and/or numbers all squiggled in a box. "My own" blogspot, which hosts my blogs, has a relatively easy process. It's easy, because it only used lower case letters, so it's rare for me to foul-up when commenting. Try it and see.

Yahoo, on the other hand, has made sending mail very stressful for me. They combine upper and lower case letters plus numbers and a squiggly line running through which makes it hard to know if I'm looking at a lower case c or e. I probably run a 10% failure rate. I can feel my blood pressure rise, every time I'm confronted by these challenges.

I think that all teachers should send at least 15 yahoo letters a day to have some idea how much some of our students suffer. The same goes for parents of dyslexic kids, but that may be even harder, since it's genetic, and some of the parents may then have to deal with their reading disability in addition to yahoo's challenge.

Don't condemn "laziness" so fast. First get into their skin.