Dyslexia Awareness Week

Dyslexia Awareness Week is an annual event run by the British Dyslexia Association to raise awareness and further understanding of dyslexia. Dyslexia is a common, lifelong difference that affects reading, spelling, and processing written language, and often co-occurs with other neurodivergent conditions including ADHD.

The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative’s user story for Stefan, a student with dyslexia and ADHD, describes the reading strategies he relies on: digital books and documents where he can adjust font, text size, line spacing and background colour, read-aloud software that highlights words as it speaks them so he can follow along, and a spelling and grammar extension for writing email. He runs into trouble with scanned-image PDFs that can’t be read aloud or resized, long stretches of text with no headings to break them up, and search tools that return no results when he misspells a word instead of suggesting an alternative.

Websites that work well for people with similar access needs publish content as real text rather than images of text, respect the user’s browser settings for font, text size and line spacing, use short sentences and plain language, break long content into sections with clear headings, pair text with supporting icons or images where it helps, and offer search that handles misspellings and suggests alternatives.