[oib]

Ugh, as someone with dyslexia, it's nothing visual, so trying to visualize being dyslexic is an exercise in futility.

You know those "drunk" googles that distort your view? They certainly make it harder to walk, but they in no way make you feel drunk...

Try explaining someone what it feels like being on LSD... you can't.

Telling people that letters jump around is an easy way to dismiss people whit out having to do a lengthy and tiring explanation that likely wont be understood anyway.

I do appreciate the effort that went into this, and that people try to understand, but I don't think this particular experiment is helpful, because people will get the wrong idea about what dyslexia is.

Edit: Arzh is right in that I'm being a bit harsh/dramatic here, so I made some small changes.

[dbbolton]

I am dyslexic, and just for some background info I have uncorrected 20/20 vision but my symptoms are exacerbated by comorbid ADHD. I'm sure everyone experiences it differently, but the image on the left is a pretty close approximation of what I often see when trying to read from a page:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Dyslexic...

Say I was reading the line "...as well as other perceptual tasks." I would insert words from inside the "circle" so it would appear to me like "23 other reading tasks" or something (often times it will make no sense, which is my cue that I need to re-read the whole thing).

Other times I might just read a word like "presidental", then look back at it and suddenly it says "prudential" as if it changed when I wasn't looking at it (and I'd swear I knew it said 'presidential' the first time).

Writing and typing are a whole other can of worms that I won't open here, but suffice it to say that I've never experienced the dancing letters like in the OP.

[oib]

Would it be fair to say that you see text fine and not like that link but you do experience it that way?

I've been thinking about this since I posted my comment. I feel like it may be a reasonable way to say/explain it: we don't see letters/words jump around, but we do experience them jumping around in a non-visual way.

Is that accurate, or do you really mean that you visually see that circle like in that link?

[deelowe]

uhh... I'm sitting here wondering if I'm mildly dyslexic. I often swap letters around when typing, read words that aren't there, leave words out, etc... I've always had this problem and just assumed I didn't proof-read well enough.

Is there a test for mild dyslexia? How would one know for sure? Should I care? I doesn't bother me much other than people thinking I have terrible grammar and reading comprehension skills.

[iBzOtaku]

> suffice it to say that I've never experienced the dancing letters like in the OP

There's an Indian movie "Taare Zameen Par" (Like Stars on Earth) [1] about a young boy with Dyslexia. He faces the exact problem of "dancing letters" like OP. Maybe Dyslexia has variations?

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0986264/

[LoSboccacc]

does things like the open dyslexic[1] font actually help?

1: opendyslexic.org

[adam12]

The image on the left is pretty much what I see if I was reading "other perceptual tasks".

I just figured that was normal. I have always been a very slow reader though.

[adam12]

Thanks for your comment. I have suspected that I have dyslexia for years, but now I am almost certain that I do.

Interesting article: http://www.iflscience.com/brain/font-simulates-dyslexia-make...

“For most people with dyslexia, the letters and numbers do not jump around on the page and the colours remain the same,” Britton said. “It is simply a breakdown in communication between the eye and the brain. You can see the information, you can see each letter perfectly but there is something in your mind that is stopping or slowing the process of information.”

[nostromo]

Yes, it's a subconscious affliction. Reading is slower and more taxing because your conscious brain has to be more involved.

For me the biggest challenge was b and d and p and q. When I was young, I would have to stop and consciously think about which letter was in front of me, when most kids around me immediately knew the right letter without any conscious thought.

The closest thing I've experienced to dyslexia is learning to read a foreign language with different glyphs. You go very slow and you have to really consciously think about what the symbols mean.

[Someone1234]

That quote is a great description.

A lot of people think dyslexia is this fixed level of degradation but in reality a lot of things impact how dyslexic the same individual is including: tiredness, stress, fitness, age, concentration, and so on.

Although those things don't impact dyslexia in the obvious way (less stress == less dyslexia, less tiredness = less dyslexia) for example I suffer less from dyslexia when I am tireder/sleepier. Why? Maybe the part of my brain that causes dyslexia is more active when I am not fatigued. I don't really know.

But every time people talk about words literally jumping around on a page or strange colour changing because of dyslexia I honestly wonder if we have the same condition at all...

[Arzh]

As someone also with dyslexia, I thought it was pretty good. Yes it is not that extreme but that is the point of the piece I think.

[27182818284]

I enjoyed the demonstration because although I could still read it I could notice that I had to spend extra effort to do so.

[amadeusw]

Exactly. I think most of us see this project as a hyperbole. Dyslexia does not make you literally see scrambled letters, but make it similarly difficult to read. I found the long and uncommon ones like "phonetical" especially difficult.

To people with dyslexia: are shorter and more common words easier to comprehend, just like in this piece?

[geon]

Yes. It's just my interpretation of something I heard.

[baddox]

I'm not dyslexic, but the bigger problem I see with this demonstration is that I actually still found it fairly easy to read. There's actually not that much ambiguity for most rearranged words when they're in the context of grammatical sentences. I'm sure that real dyslexia is a much more difficult challenge than this demonstration.

[KingMob]

The creator is taking advantage of the fact that most of us read words semi-holistically (if not, it's a hell of a coincidence). Research has demonstrated that as long as the first and last letter remain unchanged, we can read passably well. (Though "bookmarklet" took me some time to decipher.) Difficulty does varies from anagram to anagram, however.

I guess the idea is to mimic the increased cognitive load of dyslexia to give non-dyslexic people a feel for it, without making each word as difficult as deciphering full anagrams.

[haberman]

Interesting. For me (not dyslexic) this demonstration hurts my head so badly that I can't read more than one sentence at a time without looking away.

Some of the words pop out to me immediately, but others I have to stare at for a while before I can figure out what the word is. The way the letters jump around puts an immediate stress on my brain that is really unpleasant.

[kumaraman]

I have to agree with you, I am dyslexic and found this not much more difficult to read than normal text. I find when reading I will stare at words in sentences knowing what they say and what they mean but not knowing or being able to understand the meaning of the sentence overall. I will often re-read the sentence over and over and end up moving on not understanding what it means, just knowing certain words were mentioned.

[eterm]

Especially when the first and last letters aren't changing as in this example.

[facepalm]

I found it readable, but I am glad I didn't have to learn reading like that. Maybe then I would never have reached a level that allows me to read that.

[SCAQTony]

It came close... For me individual lines do this not the paragraph at large but sometimes I accidentally jump ahead.

There is a font called "Dyslexie" which is the only typeface I would use if I had to read a speech aloud.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyslexie

[epalmer]

I am slightly dyslexic but my oldest is severely dyslexic. She could read it (she can read a book a day now after years and years of work) She barely noticed the text changing. Oh....

But the weird thing for her is she works in a library and loves that.

[noonespecial]

I also am dyslexic. I agree with you mostly. This demonstration is not what it "looks like" to have dyslexia, but I think it might not be a bad approximation for a normal for what it feels like to have it. Explained this way, I think it has value.

[okc]

The idea of dyslexia that has always resonated with me, is that the brain is thinking in more than one dimension, or direction, at parallel times. Thinking dynamically, when being asked to do a linear task. I don't know where I heard this, but I have taken a little poetic license with the idea.

In the example of mixing letters up,a it would be more about seeing potential possibilities and not just selecting one.

I'm not proposing this as a model for all, but it certainly makes sense with how dyslexia isn't necessarily negative.

[zamalek]

> Telling people that letters jump around

I've always heard that description myselt but have never experienced anything like that as a chronic dyslexic. My remedial teacher demonstrated it very well to me when I was a child. She took a square made up of different shapes that she had arranged, jumbled it up and asked me to recreate the square. I couldn't, not after minutes. The shapes were incredibly simple (mostly triangles) and there weren't more than five of them. She then took two of the shapes that I thought identical and stacked them to demonstrate that they weren't the same at all. Apparently people without dyslexia can finish that puzzle in seconds, where stopped me after minutes.

Written as the 10-year old dyslexic me would have written this. I used to transpose similar letters, but otherwise have never had real problems with spelling.

I've always neard tnat description nyselt dut nave never experienced anytning like tnat as a cnronic dyslexic. ny renedial teacner denonstrated it very well to ne wnen I was a cnild. Sne took a spuare nade up ot ditterent snapes tnat sne nad arranged, tundled it up and asked ne to recreate tne spuare. I couldn't, not atter ninutes. Tne snapes were incredidly sinple (nostly triangles) and tnere weren't nore tnan tive ot tnen. Sne tnen took two ot tne snapes tnat I tnougnt identical and stacked tnen to denonstrate tnat tney weren't tne sane at all. Apparently people witnout dyslexia can tinisn tnat pussle in seconds, wnere sne stopped ne atter ninutes.

Not everyone experiences dyslexia in the same way.

[Your_Creator]

There are many people who are simply unaware of the visual elements in a given situation because it's usually handled by the brain at an unconscious level - similar to speech.

It seems to me like you have a heavy feeling-based response to what I must resort to calling 'dyslexic visual input'.

You may want to include some auditory input, by associating the correct sounds with the letters to help you sort through it and perhaps just brush aside any unpleasant feelings that may arise. it gets easier with practice.

A problem with studies like this is that you may learn something of what it's like to be dyslexic, but probably that's all you're gonna get out of it. perhaps there are a few super geniuses out there who will see what it's like to have it and come up with some new way of dealing with it.

A better approach, especially for someone who has struggled with it, is to find people who have overcome many, most or even all of the difficulties associated with this neurological condition and see if you can mimic what they did.

Maybe even put an ad in the paper or online and find out if you can get people to call you and very carefully unpack their experience of having it and what they have done to overcome it. What you want here is a set of instructions that you can follow, and I'd start with the things that are common to the majority of the people you speak with, so be ready to take notes or record it.

Recent studies have revealed that the brain is remarkably adept at rewiring itself, especially if you feed it the right materials to work with. I mean that both literally and figuratively, so a diet rich in omega 3s and 6s as well as any minerals or other chemicals that are precursors to neurotransmitters such as DMAE, Magnesium and so forth.

[kazinator]

Unlike inebiration, dyslexia is in fact visual by definition; it has to do with having difficulty reading, even in the absence of other cognitive difficulties. It's just not something that occurs due to some issues in the visual pipeline, which could give it a "pixel level" representation/explanation. However, the entire pipeline from the cornea of your eye and retina, through the optic nerve and back to the visual cortex, is all visual.

It's plausible that we can manipulate the raw input signal in order to recreate a similar semantic handicap later in a normally functioning pipeline, such as slowed reading due to not being able to resolve the order of letters in a word.

The demo was inspired by a particular dyslexic's remark that the letters seem to "jump around" for her.

This could be a "piece of the puzzle"; of course we can't naively believe that this reveals everything that dyslexia is about, in all its manifestations.

[oib]

To qoute user obeone from this thread:

According to Alice Wellborn, a dyslexia expert of some note: Many years ago, researchers believed that dyslexia was a visual perceptual problem - that it was based in how a person saw letters and words. Now we know for sure, through brain imaging studies, that dyslexia is a problem in the language system of the brain, not the visual system.

Dyslexia is the result of a significant weakness in the phonological processing system, or how a person's brain understands and can use the sound-based reading "code". A dyslexic reader has difficulty cracking that code.

[gnicholas]

I'm curious to know where you live. In the US—largely due to the impact of Dr. Shaywitz's work at Yale—the dominant thinking is that dyslexia is phonological, not visual. Yet in other parts of the world (including other English-speaking countries) researchers and the general public view dyslexia as something that can be visual or can be non-visual, depending on the person. One MIT professor estimated that roughly 1/3 are visual, 1/3 are non-visual, and 1/3 are a bit of both.

After talking with dozens of researchers, special ed teachers, and disability-rights advocates, I've learned that dyslexia is defined as a residual category. That is, someone is dyslexic if they don't read well, and it's not due to general lack of visual acuity or general lack of intelligence.

Considering that dyslexia is a residual category, it seems unlikely that the entire category would be caused by a single type of deficit. And in light of the fact that some (I have no idea what percentage) dyslexic readers say that their difficulty is visual in nature, this seems even less likely.

I became interested in this question because my startup, whose technology uses a visual trick to improve reading ability, became very popular in the dyslexic community. I was perplexed because much of the US-based literature proclaimed that dyslexia wasn't visual. In talking with folks in the US, I've seen a lot of cognitive dissonance because people find our (purely visual) tech to be very helpful for themselves or for their students, but it's been hammered into their head that dyslexia is not visual in nature. If that were 100% true, then one wouldn't expect a purely visual technology to be so helpful.

At the end of the day, we aren't completely sure why the tech helps dyslexic readers so much—we're just happy that people are using and benefiting from it. Sorry this reply got long and a bit off-topic; hopefully it's relevant to the larger conversation.

[oib]

I'm in Belgium. I have a feeling that the general public considers it to be something that affects reading ability and leave it at that.

However some of my language teachers (Dutch,English,French) would offer to print reading comprehension tests in a larger font, which does not help at all for me (nor any other dyslexic I know, but apparently some did find it helpful).

The speech therapists I saw after school for extra language lessons to help me with dyslexia seemed to have a lot better understanding. Or at least the never offered advice/help that I know didn't work for me, and I had noticeable improvements with those lessons.

You are correct that poor reading ability is the primary symptom of dyslexia, and that it had nothing to do with eye sight or intelligence.

Left me give you a brief run of what happens to me when reading the following sentence: "Reading this is impossible, but I try anyway." When I read it I may read "impobbible" instead. The thing is (for me) I saw the letters correctly. While reading that sentence and wrongly reading that I word I notice that something is wrong, so I stop to stare at the word and give it another attempt. At that point I see the word very clearly "impossible", but like a illiterate person I couldn't speak what was written down there (notice the phonological aspect?). The only option I have at that point is to look at each letter individually and then I usually get it "AH, It says 'impossible', of course!". I feel that the struggle I have here is really phonological in nature. After that I happily continue reading without to much issue until the next "strange" thing comes up.

So now my question is: Is this a "visual" problem? Did the letters "jump" around? Well... yes ... and ... no. They did. I read "impobbible". It really is what I thought was written down there. It feels like my brain says "yeah impossible means impobbible". As an aside, if you asked me to write down the word that I had misread, with out letting me figure out what it truly was, then I probably wouldn't be able to remember what was written down there, and just go for whatever I pronounced. At least that is what I think would happen.

You don't look at each letter individually when reading, you match patterns of letters, parts of words, whole words, fill things in based on context... I feel like it is this pattern matching that goes completely wrong every now and then.

And that is where the visual aspect comes into play. Despite not being vision related I do find that using the opendyslexic font is a noticeable help, and I'm guessing its because it changes the shape of letter and words, which in turn changes how the pattern matching works. I feel that the claim that it is not a visual problem is very accurate but that certainly doesn't mean there can't be visual based tools to help us. Note that I also have dysgraphia, mgrennan mentioned that font was more of a help when you have both.

Interesting enough I hadn't noticed the incorrect spelling of the title of this post until kator pointed it out in his comment. Anyway I hope this helps.

[mikewilliams]

I was writing a deployment script and had written './setub.sh' instead of './setup.sh'. Of course when testing it on the command line I wrote the latter. It took 3 hours of debugging, for me to finally see the error.

[agumonkey]

Very curious about it. I recently suffered health issues and I now have 'synchronisation' problems when reading and writing at the same time. I feel protodyslexic. That webpage made my brain happy, probably because being able to read scrambled text made me confident in my brain again.

[kevinSuttle]

As a person who doesn't have to suffer with this condition, I found it immediately valuable. Empathy is best practiced through experience, and I learned what that felt like. So, @geon, thank you.

[jmnicolas]

Isn't dyslexia a solvable problem ? My sister is a speech therapist and she told me that she had a lot of dyslexic kids but I never gathered that they would stay dyslexic all their lives. I'll have to ask her.

[pluma]

It isn't. It's a disability. Therapy merely teaches sufferers how to work around it more effectively but it doesn't make the underlying problems go away.