Dyslexia can affect different people in different ways and its effects range from mild to severe.

Dyslexia is a protected characteristic in the Equality Act 2010, which means that education providers are legally obliged to make reasonable adjustments such that a person is not unfavourably disadvantaged because of their dyslexia. Adult further education students, apprentices and higher education learners at college or university are all eligible to additional support to minimise the negative impact of dyslexia on their education.

Make transitions seamless. Whether it be a new class  or  setting, provide learners with the opportunity to meet new teachers and experience new environments – virtually or in-person. Introduce new routines in advance of start dates and provide visual copies of important instructions or reminders. 

Chunk tasks to support working memory. If we overload learners with too many tasks and instructions, they can easily become overwhelmed. For learners with dyslexia, who experience difficulties with verbal processing speed and memory, teachers need to be particularly mindful of how they structure lessons to support working memory. Provide clear instructions, model tasks, and check understanding regularly. Repeat instructions and ask your learners to repeat them back to you or their partners. You can also improve and develop metacognitive talk by asking learners to verbalise their thought processes.

Provide visual aids. Provide learners with glossaries, timelines, key words, multiplication squares, and spelling banks to boost memory and retention. Using mnemonics, rhymes, and songs can also be useful practice. 

Provide lesson summaries. Learners with dyslexia often benefit from receiving lesson overviews and resources in advance. These could be handouts or links to videos or websites. Audio lesson and unit summaries, recaps, and introductions, alongside early access to lesson handouts and resources, can help learmers prepare for their learning in advance, and/or consolidate previous learning. 

This Style Guide provides principles that can help ensure that written material considers the difficulties experienced by some dyslexic people and allows for the use of text to speech to facilitate ease of reading. Adopting these principles for dyslexic readers has the advantage of making all written communication easier on the eye for everyone.

When making changes consider all the ways that you use written communications, such as emails, presentations, web pages and printed materials.

Consider these principles in combination with other accessibility guidance such as the Web Accessibility Content Guidelines (WCAG).

Readable fonts

Headings and structure

Use headings and styles to create consistent structure to help people navigate through your content. In Word, you’ll find these tools in the ‘Home’ tab:

Colour

Layout

Writing Style

Dyspraxia does not affect your intelligence. It can affect your co-ordination skills – such as tasks requiring balance, playing sports or learning to drive a car. Dyspraxia can also affect your fine motor skills, such as writing or using small objects.

Formulate a list of class rules and have all of your learners contribute to it. Try using role-play to act out situations that encourage the social skills a learner needs to be part of the classroom community.

Help with tasks that require fine motor skills. If your lesson includes tasks that might cause a dyspraxic learner to struggle, such as uploading work to Onefile, provide plenty of assistance and try to introduce the learner to the activity beforehand, so they have a chance to practice and get familiar with the physical manipulations required.

Mathematics difficulties are best thought of as a continuum, not a distinct category, and they have many causal factors. Dyscalculia falls at one end of the spectrum and will be distinguishable from other maths issues due to the severity of difficulties with number sense, including subitising, symbolic and non-symbolic magnitude comparison, and ordering. It can occur singly but often co-occurs with other specific learning difficulties, mathematics anxiety and medical conditions.

For the dyscalculic learner, math concepts are simply abstracts, and numbers mere marks on a page. Talking through a problem or writing it down in sentence form can help with seeing relationships between the elements. Even restating word problems in a new way can help with organizing information and seeing solutions.

Draw the Problem - Dual coding

Drawing the problem can also help visual learners to see relationships and understand concepts. Learners can “draw through” the problem with images that reflect their understanding of the problem and show ways to solve it.

Dyscalculic learners can easily get overwhelmed by a complex problem or concept, especially if it builds on prior knowledge — which they may not have retained. Separating a problem into its component parts and working through them one at a time can help learners focus, see connections and avoid overload.

Relating math to the practicalities of daily life can help dyscalculic learners make sense of concepts and see the relationships between numbers. Props like measuring cups, rulers and countable objects that learners can manipulate can make math concepts less abstract.

Review Often

Because dyscalculic learners struggle to retain math-related information, it becomes hard to master new skills that build on previous lessons. Short, frequent review sessions — every day, if necessary — help keep information fresh and applicable to the next new task. Creating written or drawn references such as cards or diagrams can help with quick reviews.

Like other learning disabilities, dyscalculia affects learner success both in and out of the classroom. Study strategies that bring the abstract world of mathematics down to earth with visual and verbal cues and physical props can help dyscalculic learners to overcome obstacles to making sense of math.

Those who have suffered from ADHD for many years might lack motivation as well. A childhood tendency toward inattentiveness and impulsive behaviour — acting too quickly before thinking — can continue into adulthood. As many as 60% to 70% of individuals with ADHD symptoms in childhood continue to have difficulties in adult life. 

Many adults with ADHD suffer from Anxiety Disorder as well, which compounds their struggles in daily life.

Today, there are many apps for smartphones, tablets and desktop computers that can help people stay organized, reach goals, and even fight distractions — whether they have ADHD or not.

ADHD Tips For More Efficient Work

Being aware of an autistic person’s developmental profile helps to us to gain a deeper understanding of the person and how to offer support. Being autistic is an important part of someone’s identity.

Mental health is more than the absence of mental disorders. It exists on a complex continuum, which is experienced differently from one person to the next, with varying degrees of difficulty and distress and potentially very different social and clinical outcomes.

Mental health conditions include mental disorders and psychosocial disabilities as well as other mental states associated with significant distress, impairment in functioning, or risk of self-harm. People with mental health conditions are more likely to experience lower levels of mental well-being, but this is not always or necessarily the case.

Don’t avoid words like “see” and “look.” Just like their sighted peers, these words should be part of a blind or visually impaired learner’s vocabulary to connote how they see, whether by touch, bringing things close, or in normal conversation, like saying “see you later!”
3. Don’t gesture, always verbalize

When writing in the chat, always verbalize what you are writing so the learner has access to that information and can follow along. Use positional and directional concepts like above/under, on top, behind/in front of, left/right, etc., and use descriptive sentences like “The ball is next to the door” instead of “The ball is over there.” Avoid words and phrases like “here,” “there,” “over here,” “over there,” and gestures that provide direction, e.g., pointing to a location without verbalizing what is being pointed to because visually impaired learners cannot see that.
4. Avoid asking if a learner can see something

Don’t ask a learner, “Can you see this?” They often can see it, but that does not mean that they can access it or read it. Instead ask, “Can you find X?” or “Can you identify all the words and numbers without guessing?” or “Can you see some parts of the screen better than others?”
5. Contrast, contrast, contrast!

When teaching visually impaired or learners, use contrast for everything. Think, “bold, big, and simple!” in your use of colours, fonts and images.