Ben Foss, an accomplished dyslexic with a JD/MBA from Stanford and co-creator of the Intel Reader as well as author of, "The Dyslexia Empowerment Plan" believes it is essential we recognize dyslexia as a disability. Accordingly, just as we would build a ramp for a person in a wheelchair, we should make and accept accommodations for individuals with dyslexia. Reading Ben's book reaffirmed that granting the appropriate accommodations levels the playing field and unleashes the true potential of a dyslexic more than anything else. As he states on his website, Headstrong Nation:

"A child with dyslexia will never eye-read as well as his peers, and that, I hope to reassure you, is fine. Yet all children need to be exposed to vocabulary and ideas to be successful in school. If your child was blind, providing text as audiobooks or Braille would allow her to read with her ears or with her fingers. No one would ever claim that a blind person was lazy or stupid for not reading text with her eyes.When I listen to audio, that’s ear reading. When I speed it up to four hundred words a minute, four times the pace of standard speech... I am leveling the playing field for me. It’s not what the mainstream conceives of as reading. But it’s ear reading. It’s learning. It’s literacy."

The goal is to enter the building or get to the content in the book, and it should not matter whether one enters via a ramp or stairs or by 'eye or ear reading'. It's the comprehending, learning and ultimately applying of the information that matters.

Sally Shaywitz conducted epidemiologic longitudinal research on the connection between IQ and reading ability in typical and dyslexic students. The Figure below describes the results of this research. "The results show that in typical readers, IQ and reading track together and are dynamically linked over time." This sentiment is widely accepted by the public. "In contrast, the Shaywitzes found that in dyslexic readers, IQ and reading diverge. Thus, a highly intelligent dyslexic student can have a low reading score." This sentiment is often misunderstood and therefore the dyslexic student is often mistreated and misidentified as less capable than his peers. With reading support, for example through audio books and text to speech software, a dyslexic child can absolutely compete with his peers.

Figure 1: The dynamic (left) and dissociated (right) links between IQ and reading in typical and dyslexic students. Graphic courtesy of Drs. Shaywitz, The Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity.

Familiarizing a child in text to speech is not a quick fix and can sometimes take months or even a year. There will be a trial and error period with voices and speed and simply increasing listening ability and comprehension. I have found that children are more likely to take to 'ear reading' if they start with a book with a human voice and a topic of interest. Audible is a great resource to introduce audio books with human voices. Depending on your child, if you introduce audio books to them by initially listening with them, it may further encourage their use of this tool. Following experience listening with human voices, your child will find access to over 80,000 audio books with a broad range of subjects on Learning Ally. Critical to a dyslexics school success, 65% of Learning Ally books are from core-curriculum subjects from kindergarten through post graduate school. Unlimited access to all of these titles is available to individuals with a documented print disability for a relatively low fee of around $120 annually. As your child continues to progress in listening ability (as well as need) text to speech technologies such as N atural Reader can provide accessibility to PDF, word, webpages and more, even further broadening a dyslexics ability to access information.

We are fortunate to be living in an age of advanced technology, which allows the kind of accommodations dyslexics need in order to compete at their intellectual ability, regardless of their fluency rate. The main barriers to overcome in order to apply these technologies adequately are three-fold: First, because dyslexia is not something you can readily see, and therefore more of a 'hidden' disability, the accommodations are more likely to not be accepted by teachers, parents or the student themselves. Secondly, a child must have the advocacy skills, which come from self-acceptance, to ensure they receive these accommodations. And, third, as mentioned above, parents and children must take on the learning curve required to attain and perfect the new skills these technologies require for peak use. As these barriers fall, however, a student is left with the option to peruse through endless amounts of information and satiate their desire to attain knowledge just as their eye reading peers.

Resources:

Foss, Ben. The Dyslexia Empowerment Plan, Ballantine Books (May 17, 2016)
Foss, Ben, http://headstrongnation.org/tags/dyslexia-empowerment-plan. (Nov 11, 2013)
E. Ferrer, B.A. Shaywitz, J.M. Holahan, K. Marchione, and S.E. Shaywitz (Psychological Science) Dyslexia Study Uncouples Reading and IQ, http://dyslexia.yale.edu/Research_IQReading.html. (2010)
Audible, http://www.audible.com/
Learning Ally, https://www.learningally.org/
Natural Reader, https://www.naturalreaders.com/