I have Dyslexia, and that’s OK

I still remember, surprisingly vividly, being in that big hall at school doing my Dyslexia test. I remember thinking at the time that it was ridiculous I was taking this test (kids and their egos) — as I’d generally done pretty darn well at school (and had recently started at a school with a tough entrance exam). I mean, how could I have Dyslexia? That was something I thought just meant you processed words slower, which is why I figured you needed extra time. Now I was never amazing at spelling & reading, but I definitely wasn’t the worst.

Anyway, I remember being next to a friend in that hall, and after each section was handed out we both rushed to finish it first, proving to each other that we clearly weren’t Dyslexic and were clearly the smartest people in the room (again, ego…). So it was a big surprise when I got my results and it was stated I had Dyslexia. I don’t really remember exactly what was said in the report, but I remember telling people that I was above average in most categories but was just slightly below average in one of them and it wasn’t a big deal.

I was embarrassed about it.

The fact that I got extra time to do my exams, something I think helped me tremendously, always made me feel guilty. Some exams most people in the room didn’t finish, but I got an extra 10% more time to keep going. It always seemed tremendously unfair to me. Surely everyone deserves enough time to actually finish the exam. We’re all different — some people write very quickly, others slowly, some like to plan more on paper others plan in their heads. How is not giving people enough time really assessing them fairly?! I’ll stop ranting about the exam system here, as I know far too little about it and that’s not what I want to write about.

So, I continued my life pretty normally, I still struggled a bit with grammar and spelling but as computers added in auto-correct, and I wrote emails so regularly — I got pretty good at them and my Dyslexia never seemed an issue.

It wasn’t until last year that I really thought that much about it, before then I would only tell people I was Dyslexic as a joke, half hoping they wouldn’t believe me.

A year ago though, I had a manager who had decided he didn’t want me on his team (for issues I’m not certain on) and decided to use my ‘not quite perfect writing’ as his first validation to HR to start his process to remove me.

Now here’s the key thing I wanted to talk about. Not the manager, but the fact that I never really thought about or told people about my Dyslexia. Why? Because I still had that shame and I still didn’t believe that I really had it. I think with most learning disabilities, there is a thought that its something you want to remain hidden. In fact, if you’re able to hide it, maybe in a way you’ve overcome it. If no one knows then clearly you’ve ‘fixed’ this problem with you.

So after moving to another team, I decided I wanted to learn more about Dyslexia, I wanted to try and create a better way for the company to view it and I wanted to make Dyslexia something people could be proud of.

Learning More about Dyslexia

Dyslexia affects a large number of different areas in people’s lives, most of which people know that it affects the way that words are processed by the brain. This is why certain fonts, color contrasts & certain words are harder to distinguish from each other. This is the main thing I knew about Dyslexia, and I knew techniques like using serif fonts (“fonts with curls” that show letters with more differences), yellow tinted glasses (helping with contrast) and reading aloud what you write can make a big difference.

However, also linked to this brain processing, are issues of organisation and how you make links between concepts and objects. This actually leads to Dyslexic people being better at creative pursuits, particularly creative problem solving, as they process things differently. In fact, one of my idols, Richard Branson, has Dyslexia and often attributes it to his way to problem solve out of the issues that come out of a business. There is a great video in which he talks about it here.

For me, everything I read about the organisation issues resonated, as well as many of the solutions (writing todo lists, writing down my plans, writing up the day… strangely a lot of writing considering that is often an issue), which I always knew I preferred but made more sense when linked to my Dyslexia.

How to make Dyslexia better at a company

I currently work at Google, and although there is legal precedent in Europe, there is no protection in the US, and unfortunately as such no company policy. After trying to find where it would sit, I was lucky enough to find out about an internal group dedicated towards special needs. It was here that I was able to use this as an umbrella and went to work.

First was to create a group where people could post their questions, offer support and club together. We created a Google group (obviously) and I was able to help a number of people in the company that had also experienced both discrimination or were looking for ways to make it easier to work in the corporate world.

Secondly, I wanted to create a guide (or playbook), a document that people could turn to to:

• Learn about Dyslexia
• Learn about how to deal with certain issues they faced
• Learn how to build sites that were easier for Dyslexics to read
• And most importantly advice for managers, with the hope being that those being managed could point them to this as a ‘validation’ and get help rather than being seen to ‘make excuses’ for not writing well.

Thirdly I decided that the best way to instill change was to bring people together, so my main focus is (currently) to get more people into the group. The way I plan to do this is to:

• Start an internal poster campaign (which will try to make light of its text-centric message)
• Start a newsletter that people can share and learn from each other

Which leads me on to…

How to be more proud of Dyslexia?

One of the key focuses of the poster and newsletter is to have more people talk about it. I’m hoping by stating facts like 10% of people in the western world (just in terms of the current figures, though its likely this number is the same worldwide) have Dyslexia will help. This should hopefully make people realize that this isn’t a small percentage of the population.

The other thing I wanted to push with this is to those that have it, should share their understanding and experiences. I’m hoping to use this Newsletter to show people in the organisation off — why they are thankful for their Dyslexia and what they find useful for them to work through challenging areas for them.

I am also considering creating an email signature for people to use with ‘I have Dyslexia, and that’s OK’ that links through for more details on it on an internal site. I haven’t fully decided about this yet, but I might trial it myself and see what happens with it (and do a bit of testing to see how many people click through, we are a data centric company after all).

Going Forwards

For those that follow me, I decided to create a Chrome Extension to help people out with Dyslexia here:

I’m lucky enough to have development skills to be able to do this, and hope to extend it and promote it further (hopefully to support more browsers as well).

I’ve started to think more about the websites and apps I build and wonder if I am choosing a UI that is best for everyone (and as Dyslexia recommendations fold in nicely to other Accessibility recommendations it’s something all developers should be doing).

For myself, I’m also going to work more on my organisation skills and todo list skills (I really love post-it notes and highly recommend them for others that find organisation hard!). Its been an area of mine I wanted to focus on for awhile, especially as I’m currently in a more PM type role and want to one day be an Entrepreneur. I’m monitor what works and what doesn’t work for me, and hope to be significantly better by the end of the year.

Finally for anyone that has Dyslexia: I very much view it as a blessing and not a curse. I think the benefits outweigh the weaknesses, especially as technology makes many of these less of a problem / less visible. We should try to embrace our Dyslexia by mentioning it to people more, we should promote it internally in companies and then hopefully we’ll start to see changes both inside and out of our companies.

We’re living in an exciting time for understanding, acceptance and technology and I’m proud to say I have Dyslexia.

PS: If you have any great ideas for both the extension or useful tools for people with learning disabilities please submit them to my new site: