This is what reading is like if you have dyslexia
A simulator has been developed to raise awareness of what reading is like for those that have dyslexia.
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The Dyslexia Simulator shows a page of text as a dyslexic reader would see it. The words and letters 'jump about' and create confusion.
The simulator mimics what reading is like for someone with minor dyslexia, but it's incredibly hard to read and gives a powerful insight into just how difficult it must be for a child diagnosed with the condition.
Try reading the page for yourself in the Dyslexia Simulator.
To make sense of the text, we found ourselves relying on our knowledge of word shapes, spelling rules and context - and it brought home just how hard it would be for a child beginning to read, who would not have this level of knowledge and reading experience to help them.
The simulator was developed by Victor Widell on his blog, Geon.
People with dyslexia have responded to the simulator, adding in their experiences of how lines of text appear to them. One wrote:
"Just for completeness, my dyslexia is more 'vertical' — words and letters swap into preceding and following lines."
Other admitted that this was not how their dsylexia affected their reading:
"I have dyslexia and it's nothing like this. My mum used to tell people that reading was difficult for me because words "jumped about" on the page and it used to annoy me that that's what people would automatically think but not all dyslexics are the same! I can see the words like everybody else sees words but 1. My mind will convince me that a word is a completely different word from what it actually is. 2. I can't start at the top left hand corner and read long passages, my eyes dart around and look for key words rather than read the whole passage. There are lots of different types of reading Dyslexia."
The simulator uses a piece of text from Wikepedia, which defines dyslexia:
"Dyslexia is characterized by difficulty with learning to read fluently and with accurate comprehension despite normal intelligence. This includes difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, processing speed, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, language skills/verbal comprehension, and/or rapid naming."
