READ ON IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO EXPLORE WAYS TO HELP DYSLEXIC KIDS READ MORE.
In the UK, if you ask people about what they think dyslexia is, they mostly will make some comment about dyslexia being a condition that affects reading and will probably leave it at that.
Whilst there are some great organisations out there that are raising awareness about dyslexia, it is clear that strategies for helping dyslexic kids and young people to read books are not mainstream and so for parents of dyslexic kids this can pose a problem because not only does dyslexia affect reading ability, it also affects motivation to read.
What complicates the issue is that no one dyslexic reader is identical in terms of their needs compared to another dyslexic reader. So as parents we need to be prepared to explore multiple ways in encouraging our children to engage with books.
Thankfully over the past 10 years technology has advanced so much that we are able to explore different ways of enjoying stories even if it means that we access reading in not so conventional ways!
Reading with a tablet.
There are many apps that you could use to support reading. Here are two to try...
SprintPlus PDF.
A relatively new app on the App Store (Apple only) and one that can take a PDF and give you a quick way to support your reading with technology called text to speech.
The video below shows a short demonstration of the app reading out the start of the well known book Gulliver's Travels.
The SprintPDF app, reads out text whilst enabling the user to follow the text by changing the colour of the word being read out.
It is a really simple app and provided your text is in PDF format you will have no problems being able to access the text.
Find out more about the SprintPDF app by clicking here.
You can also use SprintPlus to read out any PDF on any Windows tablet, download a copy today from www.sprintplus.co.uk .
Tints.
Another app that I have come across today is app from the dyslexic books publishing company, Barrington Stoke called Tints.
Here is a video about the app.
STV News coverage of the Tints app from Barrington Stoke from Barrington Stoke on Vimeo.
Barrington Stoke was set up specifically to supply dyslexia friendly books and this app is a great way to assist reading by changing the way that the book looks on a tablet in terms of fonts, page colour etc.
More information can be found at http://www.barringtonstoke.co.uk/tints/.
So this was a quick post to suggest two ways to access a book when dyslexic which might engage young people and get them to read more books.
I will add some more ideas to future posts.
John Hicks
The Studying With Dyslexia Blog