It’s National Dyslexia Awareness Month! Dyslexia is a language-based learning disability “characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities.” – International Dyslexia Association [1] 2002 definition.  National Institute of Health [2] research shows that dyslexia affects 5-10% of the population. It is the most common cause of reading difficulty in elementary school children.

Overdrive [3] and hoopla [4] are here to help. One of the best ways to help a dyslexic child succeed is to allow audiobooks. The most important part of reading is gaining knowledge and you don’t have to “read” to do that! By regularly listening to audiobooks, dyslexic children are able to acquire the same level of academic knowledge, vocabulary, and complex story structure as their reading-fluent peers. Many people with dyslexia are great writers and storytellers!

Overdrive also offers the OpenDyslexic font on all Overdrive Read books – both for children and adult. While there’s no concrete evidence that this font helps dyslexic readers, many antidotal reports suggest some benefit. If you’ve never seen the OpenDyslexic font – go check it out.

Pro tip: The Overdrive interface can be changed to OpenDyslexic by visiting Settings.

The week’s open site is the University of Michigan’s Dyselxia Help page on Fun & Games for Dyslexics [5].  The page lists apps and online games that will help develop reading skills in a fun way.

Action Steps

1. Open an Overdrive Read book (might I suggest Henry Winkler’s Here’s Hank [6] series about a dyslexic second grader?)
2. Navigate to the book settings
3. Choose Reading settings
4. Select OpenDyslexic from the font list
5. Discover a famous person with dyslexia and post their name in the comments OR
6. Suggest your favorite audiobook

Print ready flyers are attached to the post if your library is wanting to promote the font.

Free Libby pins and pens available for anyone who comments!