There is no doubt I find the process of writing a long and laborious one. Its not that I cannot do it and do it well. It just takes me a longer time to do. I have written successful funding bids for large projects, business plans, dissertations, creative writing and developed new education courses and write to a post grad level etc. The one part of the writing process I find most frustrating is proof reading. It does not matter how many times I do it, which strategy I use or how long I do it for there will always be things I will miss. This is because I am a visual dyslexic. So whenever I do write I tend to ask someone I trust to help me with the proof reading and in the end the writing gets done. But that is not always possible to do.
Some of you might ask me why not use speech to text software to assist me with writing? But I find this gets in the way of my writing and with expressing my ideas. Of course software such as Office have spell checkers which can help at times. But this again interferes with expressing myself on paper. They also can miss out on words that are homophones. Homophones are words that sound the same but have different meanings and spelt differently. Not so long ago I wrote arraigned instead of arranged. The spell checker did not pick this up and neither did I because of the visual dyslexia.
Whenever, I write to my blog or social media I do not have time to spend proof reading and proof reading. Nor is there anyone else to proof read it for me. Hence some of the errors that can be seen in my blogs. But I am not going to let that fact stop me from expressing myself in writing.
Now we are getting to one of my biggest frustrations with the non-dyslexic word. Some in the non-dyslexic world will just look at the errors in my writing and contact me to criticise me for a spelling mistake, or to let me know that my grammar is not quite correct etc. They will not mention anything about what I have written, or to argue for or against what I have written. They will only concentrate on the errors they have found. They will try to remediate me like I am a child in school and they are the teacher lol. Ok you could say they are just trying to be helpful but it misses the point. I will not let their criticisms stop me from writing.
Many dyslexic children in schools in countries all over the world still go through school without being assessed, or have been assessed and get little or no support from the school. They get will be constantly criticised for mistakes in their spelling, and for difficulties with their reading etc. All they learn in school is they are failures. In the end many dyslexic kids give up writing, stop reading for pleasure and stop give up on school.
However, its not they cannot read, or write or learn. Rather it is they are not taught in ways that enable them to do these tasks effectively. They are not taught using accessible learning materials and practises or by teachers who have been trained to teach dyslexic kids in their classes. It does not cost a fortune to do this. Sometimes all it can take is changing the background colour of the computer screen or changing to a dyslexia friendly font.
Every child, dyslexic, non dyslexic, disabled etc has a right to an education that will enable them to achieve according to their abilities. Unfortunately for too many dyslexic kids this still does not happen.
That is my biggest frustration with the non dyslexic world
Hear hear Stephen!
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