
Dyslexia - seonirav
http://geon.github.io/programming/2016/03/03/dsxyliea
======
jasonkester
That's not what it's like for me.

I simply can't tell the difference between symbols that have been rotated or
reversed. So I made it through an engineering degree with "the alligator eats
the bigger number" mnemonics for > and <.

The first thing I do when I get a new dev machine is take a pen and write
"\r\n" up above the delete key. I've never gotten the slashes in the right
direction on that key sequence from memory even though I type them several
times a day (I just had to edit my post after looking it up right now and
realizing I'd typed it wrong on my new laptop).

Anything that can be reversed, I reverse roughly 50% of the time. Because to
my brain, they're interchangeable.

~~~
arethuza
I pretty sure that if someone stopped me away from a computer and asked me to
draw a slash and a backslash I'd probably get it wrong.

~~~
ColinDabritz
The cue I learned for that was "the stick man is standing on the line | and
leaning forward / or backward \ " (Which is of course western reading
direction sensitive)

~~~
tripzilch
I always remembered it as, apparently they are both handwritten as an upwards
stroke. Assuming western LTR reading direction, it means the slash forward
goes forward, and the backslash goes backwards with respect to the reading
direction.

I mean, I never really thought about it, but that's how I "know" which is
slash forward and which is backslash.

------
osteele
The reading task involves a number of subtasks. If any of these don't work
well, it's “dyslexia”. Different dyslexics have different symptoms and
experiences depending on what part of the pipeline is affected how. I'm not
surprised that a web page designed to simulate one person's experience doesn't
match others'.

For an accessible but informative intro-level text, I recommend _Psychology of
Reading_, by Rayner, Pollatsek, Ashby, and Clifton. (I took intro grad-level
cognitive psychology from Rayner and Pollatsek.) One anecdote I remember from
the first edition involved a subject who couldn't perform left-to-right
saccades; she was dyslexic in English, but wouldn't have been in Hebrew or
Arabic.

~~~
Method-X
This is a good representation of what my dyslexia is like:
[http://bin.ddai.us/dys/lib/textjumble.png](http://bin.ddai.us/dys/lib/textjumble.png)

I describe it like reading through a straw. I can only focus on one word at a
time, while most people can take in more words at once. Consequently, my
reading speed is much slower than most. Oddly, it hasn't affected my ability
to code; I can "see" code just fine.

~~~
morley
I'm sure you've come across it, but in case you haven't, have you seen Spritz?
[http://spritzinc.com/](http://spritzinc.com/)

~~~
zmk_
There is an open-source alternative that you can use as a bookmarklet
[https://github.com/ds300/jetzt](https://github.com/ds300/jetzt)

------
stephengillie
This is close to how it feels when I get a "migraine flash". 2 differences -
letters you're not looking at directly (a line or 2 down the page) don't move
or jump.

Often, key letters will just completely disappear. In their place is...a kind
of grey blank that your mind jumps over. You could _swear_ there's something
there, and you can see it when you move your eyes quickly across the word, or
out of the corner of your eye when you read the previous or next word, but it
disappears when you steady your eyes on that word.

~~~
nenreme
This sounds like scintillating scotoma:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scintillating_scotoma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scintillating_scotoma)

~~~
falsedan
It doesn't: the GP didn't mention any scintillation.

My aura was similar to their description. I would be reading, and the words
before or after the current one would be gone. I figured it was the migraine
disrupting the visual processing parts of the brain so much so that the
automatic filling in of the blind spot stopped working.

~~~
platz
I thought the blind spot was out near the periphery of your vision , not near
the center

~~~
falsedan
The optic disc is quite close to the macula, which has the most cone-rich area
of the retina (the fovea) & is where light is focused by the lens.

------
asadjb
While I agree with the other comments that it wasn't impossible to read these
letters, I could feel a real strain on my eyes and thought process while
reading the page.

I had to "concentrate" in-order to understand each letter, something I don't
have to do with normal text. I can't imagine how difficult it would be to
constantly have to read everything like that.

Also, while most words were easy to make out, the ones that I don't use in
everyday life; like "Typoglycemia" were impossible to figure out. I had to
check what it was linked to.

~~~
Klathmon
I have some mild dyslexia, and for me the biggest thing is that the letters
don't "jump around", they are permanently out of place, or in some cases
letters are consistently "added".

I play a videogame where there is a character named "Medivh" (pronounced ma-
deev). Even knowing that, even having played that character for over a year, I
still read it as med-va.

And a lot of words are like that, I'll be reading along and hit a word like
constantly and read it as "consistently" even though it doesn't make sense,
then get confused and need to re-read. Or like in your second sentence I read
"concrete-trate" and had to reread it to make sense of the word.

~~~
seba_dos1
Switching letters and words like what you described happens to me occasionally
*but not consistently) when I'm really tired or not fully awake yet.

Just wondering - do fonts like
[https://opendyslexic.org/](https://opendyslexic.org/) make it easier for you
to read?

~~~
Klathmon
I don't know if openDyslexic works for me, I really don't like the look of the
font and haven't really read it long enough to see if it makes a difference.

------
Gusbenz
I have Dyslexia. It's not like this bullshit. I think this kind of crap
propagates more misunderstanding.

~~~
sillysaurus3
What if it is like this, but for different people? A single case of Dyslexia
isn't necessarily representative.

~~~
zamalek
I honestly think that dyslexia is a range of undiagnosed conditions. It's
nothing like the simulation for me, but it's not the first time I've heard of
letters jumping around.

~~~
technothrasher
Dyslexia simply means having trouble learning to read. Being diagnosed with
dyslexia does not give any indication as to the cause of the dyslexia. The
formal definition in the DSM-5 is:

"a pattern of learning difficulties characterized by problems with accurate or
fluent word recognition, poor decoding, and poor spelling abilities."

------
bArray
I assume I'm Dyslexic (never got tested for various reasons), but I experience
what I have in a different way to this. When reading sentences I sometimes
read the words in the wrong order, completely changing the meaning of the
sentence at times.

The way to describe my experience is that when you read sentences, you are
sometimes surprised by what you read because it seems wrong, re-read it and
find out that's not what it said at all. The correction I might possibly make
on this site would be to have webcam input and change only when your eyes are
not looking at something and to make the change more subtle so you're not
aware of it in your peripheral vision.

Day-to-day (not big) issues are:

* Having to re-read paragraphs because I read it wrong and therefore failed to understand it. * Coming unstuck in a point I'm making because I failed to read the text correctly. * Some fonts I really cannot read at any speed - basically if it differs too much from very standard computer fonts. * Given up writing lowercase in my own handwriting because I cannot easily read it - the workaround for me was to write completely in capitals. * Generally wanting to avoid reading because of the above issues.

Benefits:

* Able to spot mistakes in large bodies of text really quickly, but equally could be a result of just being a programmer. * Skim reading is easier because I have gotten used to getting words in the wrong order anyway, which almost the same as missing words.

Also, I find it funny that one test for whether you are dreaming is reading
sentences in your dream doesn't make sense - I get this anyway :) Proof we are
living in the matrix? ;)

Interested to hear if anybody else also experiences this and can even
enlighten me a bit.

~~~
Posibyte
I also do this. Sometimes it feels like I can't slow myself down and I read
too fast, grabbing words, but putting them in the wrong order in my head.
Sometimes I also write words out of order, or skip words completely when
trying to dictate onto paper.

As a child I had a pretty severe stutter which is not as pronounced now, and
the feeling I got from that is the same feeling I get now as an adult with my
reading.

I've not experienced the dream one, at least in any way that I can remember. I
tend not to dream in general however.

And just like your second bullet point, on several occasions I've approved
written material that was quite poor because my brain filled in the blanks
with what I thought sounded nice :)

~~~
bArray
>As a child I had a pretty severe stutter which is not as pronounced now, and
the feeling I got from that is the same feeling I get now as an adult with my
reading.

I had a pretty bad stutter at one point, not mid-words but just repeating a
word out of order over and over. For example, when trying to say "today", I
used to say "Day day day today". People would find it funny, but actually I
had no control at all. It took years to train myself out of this habit.

>I've not experienced the dream one, at least in any way that I can remember.
I tend not to dream in general however.

The dream was a joke :) It's about telling whether you are dreaming or not,
the joke being that because of the way I read sentences I couldn't tell
anyway.

>And just like your second bullet point, on several occasions I've approved
written material that was quite poor because my brain filled in the blanks
with what I thought sounded nice :)

This sometimes works in my favour, I'm able to bridge gaps when people don't
write enough information. Equally, sometimes when dictating my own ideas I
sometimes miss words or entire sentences despite actually thinking them up and
going to type them.

------
konart
Had no problems reading this even as a non-native speaker. This is similar to
the case when you mess around with "inner" letters of the word, but leave
first and the last ones in their places (I've read about this experiment 10
years ago maybe). While the word changes - you still able to read it in text
(other words are transformed too in this case obviously).

~~~
richrichardsson
"Dyslexia is characterized by difficulty with _LEARNING_ to read fluently".

You may have read it, but you didn't understand it!

~~~
Broken_Hippo
That's seriously not true for folks with mild dyslexia. That's why folks don't
necessarily find out until adults: no actual difficulty learning to read, but
sometimes it results in weird things that weren't picked up on when we were
kids. Spelling, for example. Getting left and right mixed up. Certain
behavioral traits. More trouble with reading as one gets older and has more to
read and/or difficult texts.

~~~
danellis
Funny thing: I keep getting left and right mixed up since I moved from the UK
to the US. It's as though my subconscious understanding of "left" was always
"the side cars drive on". Flipping that also flipped the words in my head.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
That is quite funny. I'm pretty glad I didn't suddenly get that when I
switched countries. Of course, I switched up the two before I did so. I
learned to feel for my heartbeat on my left side to tell them apart.

------
kuwze
I have no clue if this works (I have not been diagnosed as dyslexic) but it
certainly makes things more readable for me:
[https://opendyslexic.org/](https://opendyslexic.org/)

~~~
gnicholas
OpenDyslexic also has more space between letters and words, which makes
reading easier for some. But for others, the increased space is too much, and
it actually makes it harder.

One other benefit of OpenDyslexic is that it is a very "heavy" font. If you're
struggling to read something in Helvetica Neue, switching to _any_ heavier
font would make it easier to read.

------
chrismatheson
Hi, bit of a shameless plug, but I've been working with my dad and some
dyslexia experts for the last 5 years and we have made
[http://www.unitsofsound.com/](http://www.unitsofsound.com/)

If anyone wants to check it out that would be awesome.

On the subject, my dad and I are dyslexic, and this course (in a different
form) has helped immeasurably. We also have a couple of experts on the subject
area that I can put anyone in touch with if they have any questions, please
reach out info@unitsofsound.com

------
ergothus
As far as I know, I don't have dyslexia. I've always been a voracious reader
and haven't had the challenges one normally associates with the label.

But now and then - maybe once a month, maybe a few days in a row, some normal,
easy, word will look _wrong_.

The letters don't "jump around", but it looks wrong the way a missplelled word
does...I end up staring at it and trying to imagine how it SHOULD be spelled.
That'd be less weird for me if it was a word with lots of typical english
weirdness, like "necessary", but this happens on really _simple_ words, and
usually just one word at any moment. Then later, that particular word stops
doing it.

In recent history I can recall this happening with: "tree", "the", "matter",
and (ironically) "simple", but I've never noticed any pattern to which words
do it, and these are words that only do this for a few minutes or hours, then
stop. "the" just looked as wrong as "teh" normally looks wrong, and every
instance on the page looks like a glaring error until it subsides.

Does anyone know what does this? It's not a notable problem for me - because
these are simple words that I have a lot of familiarity with I can just
logically override the emotional component, but it still weirds me out. What
else can my brain do this with, making something normal and mundane wrong and
alien for a brief period?

FWIW, English is my native language.

~~~
Baeocystin
>and these are words that only do this for a few minutes or hours, then stop

Some neuron died, and it takes a while for the RAID 5 of the mind to rebuild
the array.

I'm only half-joking. I know exactly the feeling you're talking about, and
it's the just-so reason I came up with to amuse myself. Realistically, it
probably a relative of semantic satiation.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_satiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_satiation)

~~~
ergothus
I should stop using these cheap parts...

But seriously, thanks. Just knowing my crazy isn't unique is comforting. Plus,
any day that I get to see "See also: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo
buffalo Buffalo buffalo" as a serious entry in Wikipedia is not a terrible
day.

Between this and someone telling me about
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala_hijack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala_hijack)
I'm starting to feel almost normal.

------
gnicholas
> _There are three proposed cognitive subtypes of dyslexia (auditory, visual
> and attentional)_

In the US, unfortunately, many experts focus exclusively on the phonological
aspects of dyslexia (which corresponds to the "auditory" description above).
In other parts of the world, the understanding is broader and includes visual
aspects also.

It seems that the narrower, U.S.-based conception of dyslexia goes back to
some research done at Yale in 1996 [1], which is often summarized as "dyslexia
is phonological, not visual". Because Americans have such a high opinion of
Yale, educators/experts here like to parrot this sound bite, even if they
don't fully understand the research or competing research conclusions.
Researchers and experts outside the U.S. have a different view (and IMO are
less influenced by a research report from Yale).

I have been especially curious about the visual impacts of dyslexia, because
the technology I work [2] on is visual, and according to many people with
dyslexia, it is extraordinarily helpful for them. Having heard repeatedly that
"dyslexia is not visual", I was curious to know why a visual technology would
have a materially beneficial effect for readers with dyslexia.

In conversations with dyslexia researchers, I have learned that there may be
second-order effects of dyslexia that are visual — even if the root causes of
dyslexia are not visual. Basically, people with dyslexia dislike reading and
therefore do not read much. This causes them to lag on a number of reading-
related skills, including visual tracking. Since visual aids can improve
visual tracking, they can help readers with dyslexia, even if they don't have
a type of dyslexia that was originally caused by visual differences.

1:
[http://dyslexia.yale.edu/Scientific_American_1996.pdf](http://dyslexia.yale.edu/Scientific_American_1996.pdf)

2: [http://www.BeeLineReader.com](http://www.BeeLineReader.com)

~~~
walshemj
That's interesting in the UK I was diagnosed early 70's with dyslexia by my
optician - who had an interest in the subject.

~~~
gnicholas
Yeah, opticians here in the U.S. would just focus on glasses/contacts.
Dyslexia diagnoses here generally comes from school psychologists or literacy
specialists. The standards vary — in some places it is very difficult to be
diagnosed, and in other places it is very easy.

------
grondilu
I had hard times reading this (about 10 times slower than normal text). What
does that say about me?

~~~
arbitrage
That you tell the truth on the internet. Quite an oddity.

------
neom
For me the "movement" part is basically my mind trying to process 2D object in
3D space. They "jump" because somewhere back there, my mind is trying to show
me what the glyph would look like if it was in front of me floating. This is
why b and d are hard, etc. Sufficed to say, mine is nothing like this website.

------
symbolepro
Seeing this, I remember an Indian movie Tare Zameen Par
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taare_Zameen_Par](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taare_Zameen_Par)).
The film explores the life and imagination of Ishaan, an 8-year-old dyslexic
child.

------
yladiz
Seeing this helped me gain a real appreciation for the effects of dyslexia
that being told how it is hasn't, even if it's not truly accurate to how
everyone is affected by it. Seeing this has made me curious about how dyslexia
affects non-English/Latin alphabet readers too, e.g. Chinese, Korean,
Japanese, Arabic, Thai. Is there someone on here that has dyslexia and
reads/writes in these scripts that can explain how it affects them? For
example, in Korean do the pieces of each individual phoneme move around in
ways that don't make sense, e.g. ㄷㅏㄴ normally is 단 but the ㄷ and ㅏ switch
places? Or in Chinese, do the strokes within each character move around, or do
the characters simply move positions within the phrase?

------
CurtMonash
I was a reading prodigy (full ability to read adult material before age 3),
with astronomical IQ scores to match (higher than what Marilyn vos Savant had
in Guinness). Even so, I think I was/am mildly dyslexic.

Clearly, if it's real it's mild, and not much of a disability. Still:

\-- It took me several years after I learned to read to stop mixing up letters
and their reversed forms (e.g. lower-case b/d). \-- I still have to think hard
to avoid mixing up east/west in many map-reading situations. \-- (Don't know
if this is relevant) I always have had great difficulty identifying the
direction a sound is coming from.

I also generally have difficulty memorizing visual details, recognizing faces,
etc.

------
nanoniano
Didn't see the point on this post. Then I realised I have JS off.

cf.:
[https://twitter.com/1990sLinuxUser/status/97350916902105089](https://twitter.com/1990sLinuxUser/status/97350916902105089)

~~~
sleepychu
Seems like the cure for dyslexia is disabling JS.

------
petercooper
This is like a written version of how I seem to hear other people. Even when
actively listening, I frequently hear different words (whatever my brain wants
to hear or is predicting it heard, perhaps) which I question and generally
find I heard wrong.

~~~
hueving
Have you had your hearing checked? This can be a side effect of your brain
attempting to make up for hearing loss.

~~~
petercooper
I'm going to be doing that, yes, as I'm not getting any younger :-D

------
XR0CSWV3h3kZWg
I have relatively mild symptoms of dyslexia, they obviously don't present like
this. The real problems came when I tried to connect letters and words with
sounds. Once that came it was easy to read, and has been ever since. I barely
even remember struggling with reading, but spelling and pronunciation has
always been a ordeal.

My symptoms only present themselves during production or consumption. I have
no confusion between left and right in my head, I rarely get them mixed up.
But it took me forever to be able to tell people which word connected to which
side.

------
memsom
I'm mildly dyslexic. I sometimes read words incorrectly - so for example a
local hill is called "Butser", but I frequently will read "Buster" as I drive
past. So I find I read slowly aloud, because I need to process the text before
I can speak it. It doesn't happen frequently anymore, but I do still get it.
It's amazingly frustrating.

Weirdest thing - I can read that website pretty easily. I can see the words. I
think it's because I look for more markers than just the word shape when I
read. I don't know. How do others find it?

------
okket
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11218677](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11218677)
(1.5 years ago, 200 comments)

------
cliffweitzman11
I'm dyslexic and built a tool to solve this issue for me:
[https://getspeechify.com/](https://getspeechify.com/) basically it lets your
computer read out any text to you super easily. Even if letters are hard to
decode visually, they are easy to listen to. And it takes very little time to
build up the ability to listen super fast so I listen between 500 and 600
words per minute.

------
moopling
Pretty cool to see that the the scripts are no exception. If you look at the
script tags within the inspect the code is also being reordered

------
wessorh
If you are Dyslexic and an Entrapunuer and live in the bay area, consider
joining NED the Dyslexic Entrapunuer Network. See denlaunch.com

I really enjoyed meeting a bunch of other dyslexic folks and I'd never really
met any others. Bets part of a NED meeting is no one will ask you to take
notes :)

------
peter303
After a few years of reading many people recognize words in their entirety,
not as individual letters. They note the length, parts with upward extenders
such as bdhk, descenders like gjp and rounded parts etc. This is akin to
reading ideographs. I wonder how this interacts with dyslexia?

------
kibwen
I recently learned of a related condition, called dyscalculia, which is to
mathematics as dyslexia is to reading:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyscalculia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyscalculia)

------
somethingabout
This is not real or true.

I have dyslexia and have never seen text like that.

I have no trouble seeing letters or words, I just can't associate the sounds
with the letters, so I can't spell or read new words (based on the sounds).

I've dealt with it by remembering tons of words.

------
agumonkey
Lovely. I love to see how the brain can manage going through "hurdles". Gives
insight in how our brains handle parsing. Very nice.

Also: it tames my pseudo ADHD and helps me focus a lot. I'm tempted to have
this for all text.

~~~
danellis
What is "pseudo ADHD"?

~~~
agumonkey
Being overly impatient, but not to the point of being clinically diagnosed so,
it's just a quick way to describe it.

------
brooklyn_ashey
Is there a standard test for dyslexia? Are there any proven methods by which
to address these learning to read difficulties? As dyslexics, did you feel
that having the label helped you or hurt you as a young person?

------
dnprock
I've got this book reading app with AI assistant. I wonder if it'll help with
dyslexia. Would love to hear from others.

[http://book.vidalab.co/](http://book.vidalab.co/)

------
jaksmit
this example is extremely over generalized. Dyslexia comes in different forms
and can manifest through a varience in ability on a scale of things, including
math ability, remembering a sequence of numbers backwards etc. not everyone
who is dyslexic has impairments with regards to seeing symbols order reading.
I'm diagnosed as dyslexic but don't experience any of what's described here.

------
_jn
I'd be interested in seeing is how syllable splits (for ex·am·ple, with
mid·dots like this) affect reading comprehension for dyslexics.

------
Double_a_92
It's actually quite easy to read such scrambled words, unless they are some
uncommon technical term that I've never seen before.

~~~
albertgoeswoof
Imagine as a child or if you were previously illiterate, every single one of
those words will be an uncommon term - so it makes it much harder to learn to
read words in this way.

~~~
richrichardsson
Ding ding ding. Too many people quick to boast how they had no trouble reading
this yet they completely missed the 1st (major!) point of the text: "Dyslexia
is characterized by difficulty with _LEARNING_ to read fluently"

------
lasermike026
This really makes the point. Perhaps exploring different pathways would help.
Braille? Audio? Different colors or fonts?

------
mproud
The comments are GOLDEN!

Read the back-and-forth about the definition of bravery, from “Ben Tarr” and
the rest of the commenters.

~~~
mtreis86
It just keeps going and going and everyone gets more and more abusive

------
paulpauper
Does dyslexia mean the letters are jumbled or is it just a difficulty reading
fast and and poor comprehension?

------
sannee
I have always imagined that dyslexia feels somewhat like mild dose of LSD.
It's hard to describe, but the letters usually seem to move around (especially
in peripheral vision) and one has to focus mostly on individual symbols making
up a word instead of the usual words-magically-appearing-in-brain stuff.

------
callesgg
Not an accurate feeling of reading, but the general idea is about accurate.

------
kkotak
I wonder how dyslexia affects people from non-english speaking world.

~~~
danellis
I wonder how it affects people from China and other non-alphabet-using
countries.

------
muzzammildotxyz
That was really good, can you please explain how did you do it?

~~~
ronjouch
Just use "View Source" (Ctrl/Cmd + U) in your browser, the source is clear and
not minified. Look for "messUpWords".

~~~
geon
It's pretty funny to use the dom inspector in Chrome, since the effect works
on the script source code as well.

------
k__
lol, doesn't seem to hard. Words are still easily readable with the middle
letters mixed up.

------
nxsynonym
didn't have too much difficultly, but now all the letters on every page are
swimming.

------
pwdisswordfish
I wonder if that page looks normal to dyslexic

~~~
fyskij
No, actually it's very different from my personal experience as dyslexic

------
lr4444lr
It was not actually as hard as the author had probably thought. Relevant?[0]

[0][https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/8628/is-it-
true-...](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/8628/is-it-true-that-
only-the-positions-of-the-first-and-last-letter-in-a-word-matter)

~~~
geon
There is a link to the wikipedia article about the phenomenon. Unfortunately,
it seems to be butchered to oblivion atm.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Typoglycemia&oldi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Typoglycemia&oldid=758271044)

