My Dyslexia story
I was lucky and my dyslexia was diagnosed at primary school. At both primary and secondary school I received extra help. When it came to my GCSEs, I received extra time for exams and a tutor was allow to correct spelling errors in my exam papers. I also attended the Leicestershire Dyslexia Association where I was given extra tutoring.
At college I studied BTEC GNVQ Intermediate and Advanced in Information Technology. I receiving extra time for exams and a personal tutor while on the Intermediate course.
I studied for a Honours degree in Multimedia Computing. I had a Disabled student allowance to buy helpful equipment and could have had extra time in my exams.
As a developer where my dyslexia affects my reading and writing. Outside of work my dyslexia doesn't affects me much, but I prefer audiobook over reading.
There have been a few times that other peoples views on dyslexia has supprised me. A work colleague was surprised when I told them that I was dyslexia. I'm careful to proof read my emails, I guess my colleague was expecting to see spelling mistakes. I also had a careers advicer surprised that I got a first for my degree when I said I was dyslexic.
Coping with Dyslexia
Spelling is an area where my dyslexia affects me, Often I will come to write a word and not know how it is spelt. I can normally get around this by typing how I think the word is spelt into a word process or in to Google, most times I get close enough. Typing the word phonetically helps. When I cannot find the spelling this way I rely on typing the word in a parse into Google.
An example would using the word daunting. To get the spelling for this I wanting to start with the sound 'dawn'. I couldn’t spell that so I searched on Google for periods of the day. Then I searched for 'dawntim' and got daunting. I searched for ‘daunting meaning’ to check I had the right word.
Words that are spelt differently but pronounced the same can cause me to use the wrong word. I often get gramma wrong.
Reading is an activity I can find hard. Large amounts of text can appear off putting and daunting to read. I tend to listen to audio books instead.
Dyslexia and work
Looking for answers too problems and reading written communications can be hard. I can find it hard for what I'm reading to stoak. I may have to read something several times to understand what is being said. Large amount of text to reading is off-putting, but I can use Word to read out the text. Spelling in email communication can be a problem.
