What age/point remediation for dyslexia be abandoned and accommodation be fully supported and used?

Question

Accommodations; text to speech and speech to text software for the reading and writing process problems.

PDA for organization and memory problems.

View dyslexia as a processing difference instead of a treatable disease.

Answer 1

Here's a useful free website for dyslexics who are looking for a good free text to speech reading program: YAKiToMe! http://www.yakitome.com. I would imagine an excellent website like YAKiToMe! would be useful at almost all times in a person's life, whether they are dyslexic or not.

Answer 2

Dyslexia is not a disease. It is most likely a neurological disorder in the brain.

The student with dyslexia needs to learn systematic strategies to approach reading, not remediation. An accommodation with the reading/writing problem and the speech to text (and obverse) is helpful. It is physically exhausting for a student with reading problems to read for an hour. It is equal to a five-mile hike in physical impact. The PDA takes the place of lists and paper calendars, which pretty much rule a successful person's life.

My son writes in cursive using D'Neilian style because it has no fancy loop and is taught with connectors on all lower case letters. This helps him recognize that a group of letters forms a single word and does translate easily to the manuscript print he reads in textbooks. He was tutored following the Orton-Gillingham method. He learned letter sounds and to write them as he heard/said them. The trained tutor followed this multi-sensory approach which gave my son what he needed to succeed. He was tutored three times a week in one-hour sessions from third grade. This was continued during the summers and school years until 7th grade. He also learned sight words. In middle and high school he was in the Beta Club.

He is a successful college graduate with academic awards in his areas of concentration. He will be in graduate school in the fall. He uses MS Word with grammar and spellcheck for his research papers, followed by a final edit by a skilled English student. He also relies on his Franklin Speaking Spelling Dictionary which also reads definitions aloud. (When he was in grade school he used a Franklin Spelling Ace that spoke words aloud and suggested words for whatever misspelled word he typed into the program.)

The bottom line is, the student learns a strategy, or group of strategies, that help accomplish the goal of making him/her literate. It may not be in a conventional sense of what most of us perceive as normal, but in fact we all have little idiosyncrasies in different areas. The student needs to do what works for him/her. The sooner he/she can develop a Standard Operating System for him-/herself, the better. I know many teachers are not receptive, but a strong parent advocate can make them see the light.

Also, remember to teach the child to stand up for him-/herself as early as possible. Self-advocacy will prepare him/her for many situations in life, even if the parent has to follow-up throughout k-12 schooling. College is different and parents no longer have a say in what happens, so the sooner the child can calmly state his/her needs, the better.

Answer 3

I would never abandon it-but at the same time I would incorporate accommodations

Answer 4

As  specialist teacher of dyslexic children, I would not consider 'abandoning' remediation until the chronological age and reading/spelling ages of the child are at the very least equivalent. However, in my experience, many children can be taken to a higher level than age-appropriateness by further individual, programmed and targeted teaching. Like you, I would prefer to see dyslexia as a processing difference rather than a 'disease' , and in an ideal world, the accommodation you refer to should run alongside the individual, specialist tuition for the best possible results.