Dyslexia is a learning difference that can cause difficulties with learning and work. It affects approximately 1 in 10 people in Ireland. It occurs on a spectrum with some people mildly affected and others more severely.
‘Everyone with dyslexia is different but there is a commonality of difficulties with reading, spelling, and writing and related cognitive/processing difficulties. Dyslexia is not a general difficulty with learning, it impacts specific skill areas. With the right understanding, accommodations, and support people with dyslexia can achieve success in education, the workplace and in wider society!’ https://dyslexia.ie/
Literacy can mean different things to different people – but the simplest, most straightforward view of it calls for a combination of language comprehension and decoding, which combine to create reading skills.
Dyslexia is characterized by a difficulty in building sound-letter relationships (phonological processing) that creates a disruption in reading fluency and comprehension. For students with dyslexia, they may also experience deficits in background and vocabulary due to their reduced experience with reading.
There are a variety of accommodations recommended for students with dyslexia that can help improve reading engagement – and some of these can be provided using the Sora student reading app. Check out a few below.
Audiobooks
For your students with dyslexia, the opportunity to “ear read” can be a game changer in terms of how they engage with and interpret texts. If your readers are having difficulty with traditional print texts, you can use audiobooks to fill in – or prevent – content and comprehension gaps.
With audiobooks in Sora, students can also slow down or speed up the speed at which titles are read to them – providing another layer of personalisation to meet their individual needs.
Check out our Audiobook collection here
Read-Alongs
Read-Alongs are a great tool that can help build and strengthen the relationship between sound and print text, an essential component for reading. Read-Alongs are ebooks that offer both narration and highlighted text, making it easier for readers to follow along and engage with the story.
Check out our Read-Along collection here
Dyslexia Font
Dyslexic fonts are popular because they can help alleviate some symptoms of dyslexia, like the turning and swapping of letters. Students can now view both individual ebooks and Sora’s entire interface in dyslexic font.
How to enable dyslexic font
Dyslexic font is designed to make text easier to read for users with dyslexia. You can enable dyslexic font for the entire Sora app/website or in individual ebooks.
Turning on dyslexic font for the Sora app/website
- Click or tap
. - Turn on Dyslexic font (under “Settings”).
When you enable dyslexic font for Sora, the dyslexic font setting is automatically applied to ebooks you open.
Turning on dyslexic font in an ebook
If you decide not to turn on dyslexic font for the entire Sora app/website, you can still turn it on for individual ebooks.
- Go to > Loans and open an ebook.
- Select
.
Note: On smaller screens, tap the center of the screen to see this option. - Under “Book design,” select OpenDyslexic.
Kathleen Moran | Senior Librarian | JCSP Demonstration Library Project
