On Monday, 3rd December, the front of York St John was lit up purple for the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. For Disability History Month (22 November to 22 December) we have reblogged a post from one of my personal blogs, Saffron Muses. I developed this from a reflection that I originally wrote in 2015 as part of my Higher Education Academy (HEA) Fellowship application, which focussed on inclusion and diversity. It is the first in a planned series of reflections on my experiences with and strategies for dyslexia and dyspraxia. I am writing from a staff perspective, but reflect on when I was an undergraduate student. If you are a student and feel that this resonates with you, too, contact the disability team.
(By the way, I’ve deliberately left a small selection of the (conprehensible) ‘typos’ in this blog 
Or do I mean comprehensible?! On average I correct at least one of these sort of typos every two lines. This increases to two or three every line as I increase in tiredness. These are not words I cannot spell if writing longhand. My fingers struggle to hit the correct keys on the keyboard in the correct order!)
Reflection
I received my report from the educational psychologist and found out I’m dyslexic (and also dyspraxic) when I was 46, nearly 47! I have a First Class degree from UCL in English Language and Literature (BA), a Distinction from the University of York in English Renaissance Literature (MA), and am currently completing my PhD on Shakespeare. Am I sounding smug? Or am I still trying to convince myself that I can do it? That I am actually a bit clever although I often feel stupid, confused and intimidated by the world around me? I also lecture in English Literature at York St John University. So not surprisingly, several people were surprised at this diagnosis. Because dyslexics can’t read, right? Wrong. It all depends on your spiky 
profile. Genius Within say “When making a diagnosis [of Specific Learning Difficulties, or SpLDs, such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADHD and autism], we plot all the different test results on a graphic and look for specific difficulties” However, as they point out, “We can’t see difficulties, if there are no strengths! The graph shows what I mean – a neurodiverse ‘spiky profile’ showing peaks and troughs, compared to a relatively flat line (in red) of the neurotypical” (see their diagram on the left). Whilst it is the disparity in the peaks and troughs that indicate an SpLD, it can also make them harder to see. For example, I had slipped through the net as a younger person because I have high verbal competencies which masked my dyslexia and dyspraxia. The fact that I had tell-tale ink blots all over my work, and scratchings out, that I was often described as “scatty”, and that science subjects seems much more of a challenge to me then the humanities, were seen as part of being “arty”. If I had been great at engineering but obviously struggled with reading, my SpLDs would have been diagnosed much sooner.
In fact, I’ve lived the whole of my life in letters, reading, writing, teaching. It is part of the core of my being. When I was a little child I used to imagine what would be worse: to lose my hearing or to lose my sight. I thought losing my sight would be worse, because then I wouldn’t be able to read. (Obviously, my disability awareness at eight years old wasn’t very nuanced.) For me, reading was a way to be transported into worlds and beings beyond me and within me and away from me. Yes, that happens too with films, with television, and with audiobooks. But when I read, it happens in my head in an incredibly intimate way. I never imagined a day when I wouldn’t spend most of it holding a book. I disn’t know that I read differently from other people because
nobody ever told me that when they read it didn’t look like the writing in the illustration on the right. Or that most people don’t read in their heads at the same speed that they read out loud, sometimes even imagining that they are forming the words with their mouths… A former colleague once suggested I did a speed reading course. I wondered aloud how that could work. After all, I have to hold down each letter in each word with my mind to stop it wibbling. My colleague looked at me, paused, and said, have you thought of seeing a disability adviser? I was then assessed as dyspraxic at this initial meeting, but the adviser didn’t think I could be dyslexic and have such high reading skills, even though my processing was extremely slow. I couldn’t afford to pay myself for the full assessment for diagnosis of either SpLD (Specific Learning Difficulty), currently about £400 -£800. (I wonder, are there any other disabilities where you or your institution actually have to pay for a test to get diagnosed?). Three years ago, my current employer funded the diagnostic test for me and I was formally diagnosed as dyslexic and dyspraxic in 2015.
Of course, as the spiky profile indicates, my dyslexia may have helped me earlier in life. When I read, I read with concentration, analysising and understanding. I only usually managed to read things once but often that was enough, espceially if I’d annotated, because I had read slowly and carefully. If there weren’t time restrictions I’d read again and again. I noticed unusual things, earning me praise for my nuanced analysis and original thought. I often felt particularly at home in early modern poetry. I mean, it’s only as hard to decipher as everything else, isn’t it? And at least people spelt as they felt, which often makes more sense than the dictates of a dictionary. I particularly enjoyed those confusingly long passages in Shakespeare where the punctuation and grammar goes to pot but the imagery sucked me in and I fell into the page like Alice down the rabbit hole. (And I wonder whether Shakespeare was dyslexic, too… )
But when I’m tired it’s my brain that goes to pot. In fact, as an undergraduate people sometimes thought I was stoned just because I was so exhausted I couldn’t get the words out clearly. When I’m tired, I can’t get beyond the first few lines without losing concentration. The focus of the page gets out of kilter and try as I might, my brain keeps trying to read the spaces between the words instead of the words themselves. The page turns into rivulets of white water running over a dark grey cliff face, and before I know it I’m off on a tangent thinking about landscapes…. Reading on bright white paper is particularly hard, because of the glare. Reading on a screen makes it harder still, slowing down the rate dyslexic readers access text by 25% if on a computer. I may have discovered the joys of Twitter, as tweets are limited to 280 characters! The latter doesn’t help the noise and busyness in my head though, and it makes it hard to settle.
Alas, I rarely “read for pleasure” now (although my job and research is made up primarily of reading, so I probably still read much more than the average adult, and as I teach and research a subject that I love, that reading is, thankfully, pleasurable). I would love to curl up and get lost in a book like I used to, but after nearly half a century of working with an undiagnosed SpLD, I’ve literally exhausted a lot of my strategies.
Worryingly, people with dyslexia and dyspraxia are particularly vulnerable to stress and even depression and, as square pegs, can struggle to fit into the round holes society consists of.
What you can do about it.
But again, there are usually silver linings. The first of these is that we no longer have to be ashamed of being different or of struggling with disabilities – and our employers and educators are legally bound to support us. If we’re lucky, they want to support us too. It can be simple things. My department have recently started printing out my marking on coloured paper, for example. They provide me with my own office and allow me to have a “work at home” day. It makes a difference. Unions can also help, and outside organisations such as the British Dyslexia Association and Dyslexia Action give support and guidance to dyslexic staff and their employers or dyslexic students and their educators. If you are a student and if some of what I am writing rings a bell, then your first port of call is the York St John Disability Advice Team, who have a whole section on Dyslexia and SpLD. “If you think you might be dyslexic or have a specific learning difference (SpLD) there is lots of support available to you”, sometimes including, if you have a screening, additional funding for equipment, assistive technologies and training. My daughter is at university and, after her recent diagnosis, has been provided with software and mentoring through the Disabled Student Allowance. Of course, software and equipment doesn’t make a dyslexic person function like a non-dyslexic person, but it can help to reduce stress and make some tasks a little easier. A dyslexic person’s brain is always having to work twice as hard to process information so it can be exhausting. Rests, walks and mindfulness are important too. If you are staff, there is also support. When I returned to work after a period of sick leave, Occupational Health put me in touch with Access To Work, a British government scheme that works with employers to help disabled people at work with funding for training and equipment, and recommends other reasonable adjustments. I also found it useful to personalise my laptop settings so that any documents that come up on my screen automatically appear to be a bluish green, with a darker bluish green font. This reduces visual stress and helps with the wibbly-letter problem, which is exacerbated by Meares-Irlen Syndrome. I usually use Ariel or Calibri because, although Times New Roman looks elegant and book-like, all the curly bits on the letters make it harder to read.
I don’t regularly use document reading technology because it drives me mad, particularly for literary documents. Can you imagine listening to an academic paper or essay read out with no expression or understanding by a Sat Nav? Yep, it’s that bad for me, althogh some people love it. We’re all different. But I find it’s useful for short reports and notes.
Also, I have discovered audiobooks, and when you find a good one, it’s really good. Sometimes you can sync the audio with a kindle text. I often just sync myself with an actual book in my hand. Or re-listen while I fold the laundry, chop the vegetables, pick-up my kids’ toys from the floor.
I also trick my brain into reading without noticing. There is nothing like a good Scandi Noir with subtitles to have me reading for a couple of hours extra on a Saturday night. Bring on Series 4 of The Bridge! (They did!)
Most significantly for me, in addition to all the material things, however, I had intensive workplace coaching through the SpLD organisation I mentioned above, Genius Within. I’ll blog about this another time, but suffice it to say my coach helped scrape me up off the floor, rebuild my confidence and learn to be proud of who I am. There’s amazing things about being neurodiverse!
I hope that was a useful read.
Further reading: