Comment by jdietrich | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jdietrich | Hacker News Reader

There are several comments already about the scientific validity of this font, but the issue is much deeper.

"Dyslexia" cannot be meaningfully distinguished from "poor reading skills" in any measurable way. There is no evidence for the efficacy of any intervention that is uniquely suited to dyslexia; All effective interventions are equally effective in improving the reading skills of non-dyslexic individuals. There is no evidence for the efficacy of special fonts, coloured overlays or any other visual aid. These interventions are simply placebo and are likely to distract from proven interventions which are known to be effective.

The popular notion of dyslexia as a unique neurological disorder has no basis in fact. There is no agreed-upon definition of dyslexia beyond the very general description of "a significant impairment in reading ability without significant cognitive impairment". The intellectually honest thing would be to abandon the term completely in favour of a simple factual description such as "poor reading skills", but this is politically unlikely.

http://www.nrdc.org.uk/projects_details.asp?ProjectID=75

I agree that it’s disingenuous to give a specific-sounding label to a somewhat ill-defined thing, but you must consider the perspective of a dyslexic person. I have a close friend, intelligent and hardworking, an excellent speaker—who simply finds it difficult to read and to express himself in writing, or to learn foreign languages. Whether he can meaningfully be called “dyslexic” is of no import. Having that label to attach to his difficulties when he was younger let him more easily find resources to improve his written language skills. It doesn’t matter if a term is historically or etymologically inaccurate; what matters is the actual usage.

I'll be blunt about this - the term dyslexia exists to absolve incompetent teachers and schools of responsibility. All the available evidence points to the fact that dyslexics have simply been incompetently taught and never gained a coherent sense of how language works. By labelling the student as dyslexic we perpetuate the lie that the reading difficulty has come from within the individual, rather than from the failings of the adults around them.

It is very likely that your friend is absolutely no different from anyone else, but for the fact that they had a poor early experience of reading. A failed education system has found it more convenient to convince your friend that they have a neurological disorder, rather than admit to their culpability. Your friend should not have needed any clinical diagnosis to access proper teaching; We should be thoroughly ashamed of the continuing systematic failures that create such a situation.

I get the point you're making but reading this is bumming me out. Dyslexia is by far the most common learning disability. It's estimated that 5 to 10 percent of people are affected. By saying that the teachers are incompetent is dismissive but ultimately minimizes the struggles of the people who have to figure out how to deal with this very real learning difference.

But there isn't any evidence that there's anything fundamentally different about dyslexic students. We have no proof whatsoever that they enter school any different to their non-dyslexic peers, but we do know that they leave school with poorer reading skills. To say that these students are dyslexic, rather than saying that we have failed to teach them to read, is a political rather than scientific decision. We are arbitrarily labelling those most poorly-served by school as learning disabled, for no rational reason other than to absolve the system of blame.

There may indeed be no evidence that these students enter school any different from their peers. However, in the absence of evidence, you cannot make any conclusions at all. It does not necessarily follow that the school is at fault, nor does it follow that there is some sort of conspiracy at work. All we can do here is give our opinions.

If a person has a low aptitude for something, then they themselves will naturally tend away from it, and toward things at which they feel they can succeed. I liked programming initially because it fit with how I thought and what I liked to do, so I practiced it and became better. I don’t care that much about cars, so I don’t know a lot about them—just enough to do basic repairs once in a while. So it could very well be that the child has no learning disability and the educator is not at fault. We cannot know without hard data.

I'm not big on throwing this out there but I've struggled with dyslexia. As an example I wasn't able to read until I was in 5th grade. I can get lost in my own neighborhood. I have trouble learning something without physically writing it down or actually doing the activity. I'm 44 now and I wouldn't say that was a lack of skill from my teachers. When I grew up in the 70's and early 80s there was very little awareness about what to do with kids with dyslexia but it seems like your point is that if these kids just were taught properly then we wouldn't see this symptoms. From my own personal experience I can tell you that's not true at all. I also have a friend who's so dyslexic that he can't drive. He's so crippled by it that he can't even type in his own pin number. If he needs money from the bank I'll drive him and get the cash out of the ATM for him. I'm sure I could teach him how to type in 4 numbers but that's clearly not going to help. This is just a personal story with a sample size of two. I get that. With that said, maybe will shed some light on something that's affected me in a very profound way. best.

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck than it probably is a duck.

"Poor reading skills" wouldn't cover the thing that's different in your brain if you've dyslexia. I can't find the stats anymore, but I thought around 40% of the wealth is owned by dyslexic people. Look at a list of entrepreneurs with dyslexia http://www.incomediary.com/top-30-dyslexic-entrepreneurs or how many famous people (actors, writers,.. ) are dyslextic.

All these people have something in common and it's not "just" poor reading skills;) there is definitely something more going on.

I can't offer science but I will offer that my family has had a history of dyslexia on the side of my family that my brother greatly seems to take after. He has used colored overlays, lenses and contacts and it's noticeable for him if he has to go without. He's been wearing them for probably 8 years now, maybe.

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