Accommodations must be accompanied by UDL best practices to ensure effective, equitable, and inclusive access to learning materials and spaces for dyslexic students.

Students often bear the lion's share of the burden of advocating for their accommodations.

Despite appropriate support services being available, students' knowledge of the services available to them is dependent on meeting the right people.

Some learning materials used in some classes don't work with text-to-speech and Immersive Reader-type assistive technologies.

Feelings (and reality) of being behind, being unfairly disadvantaged.

Inability to immediately process and respond to printed or otherwise inaccessible materials handed out or projected in class.

Need for extra time puts students with dyslexia out of sync with classroom activities, forcing them to multi-task or miss information when learning activities require them to read.

Dyslexic writers often have very slow composition rates due to overloaded working memory, making writing a grueling hard-to-sustain process and in-class writing particularly challenging.

Use of assistive technologies "outs" them as dyslexic in class.

Few assistive technologies provided to students or facilitated for them by UNE Student Access Center outside of the testing center.

• SAC provides Kurzweil text-to-speech software in the testing center, noise cancellation headphones, ear plugs, and Livescribe Echo smart-ish pens

Students are responsible for knowing which technologies might work for them and securing, installing, and learning how to use them themselves.

Students often need more than one assistive technology

Most assistive technologies are not free. The best, most useful technologies, have somewhat substantial, ongoing subscription fees.

Free and low-cost apps sometimes don't work particularly well, adding to the burden of accessing course materials.

Few UNE photocopiers, scanners, and workstations are equipped with OCR technology or the software necessary to create ADA-compliant PDF/UA pdfs.

FERPA prevents accommodations letters from the Student Access Center from revealing students' diagnoses, so unless students self-disclose, faculty may not know that students with dyslexia are in the course.

Already burdened faculty have limited institutional support or access to technologies and services for retroactively converting inaccessible materials to accessible ones and may not know how to use technologies to create accessible versions of new materials.

Not all learning materials are readily available in digital/accessible format.

Limited guidance on teaching or supporting students with dyslexia.

A possible lack of understanding of dyslexia may lead to decisions and actions that damage relationships with students and undermine student learning opportunities. It

• may influence faculty decisions on granting accommodations, facilitating access, and providing support.

• may influence faculty judgment on the length of time it takes students with dyslexia to compose text

• may result in faculty misinterpretation of dyslexia-related surface-level errors such as misspellings and wrong word errors as evidence of sloppiness or carelessness.

• may cause misinterpretation of students' intelligence, motivation, or abilities.

Poor grades, especially in reading- and writing-intensive classes.

High risk of failing or dropping classes, being on probation, stopping out, or being dismissed.

Self-esteem, self-worth, mental health issues.

Stress, anger, anxiety, lack of motivation.

Fatigue from the burden of fighting everyday for access to a college education.

Poor sense of connection or belongingness to UNE communities.

Inadequate or damaged relationships with faculty and other sponsors and champions.

Opportunity costs for scholarships, mentorships, programs, research, and more.

HS dropout rates for students with learning disabilities are twice that of other students (National Center for Education Statistics).

"Youth with untreated dyslexia are more likely than their nondyslexic peers to drop out of high school and become unemployed, underemployed, or incarcerated" (Society for Neuroscience, Brain Research Success Stories).

Starting June 2023, Student Access has been able to count students newly registered with them by diagnosis. Over time, UNE will be able to get an accurate count of students with dyslexia who register with SAC.

Between 5 and 15% of Americans (14.5 - 43.5 million) have dyslexia (Society for Neuroscience, Brain Research Success Stories). Yale Dyslexia estimates that 20% of people have dyslexia.

2214 undergraduates were enrolled in UNE courses in Fall 2023. A conservative estimate using the Society for Neuroscience ratio suggests that there might be 111 undergraduate students with dyslexia at UNE. There might be as many as 332 undergraduates with dyslexia.

There is some evidence that suggests that systematic approaches to supporting students with learning disabilties result in persistence and retention gains:

• "Evidence from propensity analyses indicated that students with disabilities who had accessed universally available and/or disability-related supports were significantly more likely to persist in their 2- or 4-year college programs. Additionally, retention rates were higher for those who had accessed universally-available supports only, such as writing and math centers, which don’t require disclosure of a disability" (Newman, L. A., Madaus, J. W., Lalor, A. R., & Javitz, H. S. [2020] https://doi.org/10.1037/dhe0000170)

Factsheet for Anyone Teaching Students with Dyslexia

CAST Guidelines for Universal Design for Learning

The Center for Universal Design in Education

UNE Libraries Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Resources Collection, including Neurodiversity

UNE Neurodiversity Professional Learning Community's Resources List

Embracing Dyslexia - youTube channel with great interviews

Bookshare – People with dyslexia, blindness, cerebral palsy, and other reading barriers can customize their experience to suit their learning style and find virtually any book they need for school, work, or the joy of reading.

Learning Ally – human-narrated audio textbooks and literature

National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled (Library of Congress)

UNE Library digital collections.

The Study Skills Toolkit for Students with Dyslexia - requires UNE libraries login.

Ghotit Dyslexia Keyboard – The keyboard predicts words by using Ghotit Quick Spell Word-Prediction, the technology designed for writers with typing issues and phonetic writers; this technology increases writing speed and successfully predicts intended words with instant correction of the first misspelled letters.

Ghotit Real Writer and Reader – reading and writing support software from Ghotit. Useful for people with dyslexia, L2 (ELL) readers and writers, and maybe dysgraphia.

TextHelp Read&Write – a literacy support tool that offers help with everyday tasks like reading text out loud, understanding unfamiliar words, researching assignments and proofing written work.

Co:Writer – Co:Writer helps give you the words and phrases you’re intending as you type—even if your grammar and spelling are way off. Just type a letter or two and Co:Writer predicts words and phrases in real time. Companion to Snap&Read.

Snap&Read – Snap&Read is a powerful suite of tools to help with reading challenges. It includes a text-to-speech tool, a snapshot tool to turn inaccessible text on the web to machine-readable text, an annotation tool, a pdf-conversion tool that makes them machine-readable, a capture tool, and a translation tool. Companion to Co:Writer.

Wordspeller SpellEZ Phonetic Dictionary – iOS, Android, Amazon.

Omoguru – app for smartphones and tablets that helps you make the text more readable and to decode letters and words easier. A set of tools helps improve reading rhythm, focus, and speed.

Read Aloud: A Text-to-Speech Voice Reader (Chrome Extension)

Speechify – reads text, paid version lets you scan any book and make it machine-readable

Natural Readers (free) – reads machine-readable texts in a pretty natural-sounding voice

Helperbird (Chrome Extension) – allows users to customize webpages to suit their preferences, makes Microsoft’s Immersive Reader available in the browser, integrates with Google Docs and Slides as well.

Immersive Reader (often built into Microsoft applications such as Word Online, OneNote Online, Teams, and the Edge browser). Immersive Reader Extension for Chrome

Read the Fact Sheet for Anyone Teaching Dyslexia

Commit to making their classes, departments, and programs dyslexia-friendly environments.

Use the principles of Universal Design for Learning to ensure equitable access for all learners, including those with reading processing delays, low vision, multi-lingual learners, and others with perhaps undiagnosed needs. Guidelines for UDL based on the principles.

Routinely grant accommodations and extra time for reading and writing to students with dyslexia.

Look for signs that a student might have reading challenges and refer them to the Student Academic Success Center for reading support sessions.

Publish instructions and handouts in DOCX format, link to view-only files hosted on OneDrive instead of using PDFs.

Publish/provide all reading materials necessary to complete an assignment at least 4 weeks before the due date/

Ensure electronic textbooks and reading materials are available. 

• When choosing course materials, check to see if those materials are available in a variety of formats or through inclusive services such as Bookshare, the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled, or UNE Library digital collections.

Ensure that any written material that you use in class can be read aloud by a computer. This includes prompts, study guides, slide decks, as well as readings. Unless pdfs are in PDF/US format, assume they are not machine readable (448). Creating Accessible Documents

Design documents you write yourself in ways that present less written material per page with no more than two directions in a sentence. Larger fonts, double spacing, wide margins, high contrast background colors, and bullets or numbers are also helpful.

Supply in class textual material the class period before using it in class

Refer students to reading support 

Provide opportunities for dyslexic readers to talk through the material with you or a tutor on a one-on-one basis (449). 

"Students with dyslexia need to engage in pre-task discussion before they can embark on a task independently" (Reid 2016).

Allow dyslexic students to prepare oral reports ahead of time rather than requiring instant oral responses in class (453). 

Interpret phonological slips (It’s not the heat; it’s the humanity [for humidity]) as phonological slips, not as a lack of knowledge. Phonological slips are a result of confusing the sounds of language, so they should not be mistakenly interpreted as lack of knowledge (55, 453). 

Grade written work on content rather than on form, especially spelling (453-54).

Permit students to use predictive-text assistive writing technologies designed for people with dyslexia, such as Co:Writer, Read & Write, and Real Writer and Reader.

Consider making UNE a dyslexia-friendly environment or a neurodiverse-friendly environment

Consider tasking a high-level committee including interested campus partners to learn more about UNE's other neurodiversities).

Consider tasking CeTL, UFA and College Academic Technology Committees, Student Access, SASC, Student Health & Counseling, and other units with exploring ways each unit might systematically support students with dyslexia and faculty and staff who teach and support them.

Consider investing in resources and personnel to support faculty and staff overcome the routine obstacles they face teaching students with dyslexia. Initiative might include:

• improving UNE's knowledge of assistive technologies for students with dyslexia and systems of support for accessing and using them

• providing financial assistance or dedicated computer labs to ensure that students with dyslexia have access to the assistive technologies that create a fair playing field for them.

• ensuring that training to use assistive technologies is available to students with dyslexia and the faculty and staff that teach and support them.

Consider charging IT and relevant campus partners with ensuring that OCR and scanning technologies and software for creating ADA-compliant PDF/UA files are readily accessible to faculty, staff, and students.

• IT might explore institutional licensing for the full version of Adobe Acrobat Pro on all faculty and staff computers as part of the standard software package, enabling them to make ADA-compliant documents.

• If a more limited license is preferable, targeted units (including the Library, SASC, CeTL, Student Access, and Computer Labs open to students) might act as hubs for students, faculty and staff needing access.

• Provide administrative support for faculty, staff, and students needing to create accessible files.

Students with dyslexia

Students with reading-processing disorders

Low-vision readers

Multi-lingual learners

Others with perhaps undiagnosed needs

Anyone who prefers to engage with text in an alternative format

Providing high-quality learning opportunities in an equitable and inclusive learning environment lets faculty focus more on teaching the content they care about than on putting out fires.

Reduction of complaints.

Reduction of the need to engineer solutions on an ad hoc basis.

Have better relationships with students.

Reduce opportunity costs for students.

Improved retention

Greater student satisfaction

Tests model for other similar programs to address routine obstacles of other populations

UNE SASC could hire a full-time Learning Technolgies specialist charged with creating and maintaining a list of learning technologies as well as offering support sessions and workshops to teach students, faculty, and staff how to use them.

UNE Admissions could market UNE as a dyslexia friendly environment and promote dyslexia pathway resources to prospective students

UNE Orientation could promote dyslexia pathway resources and host sessions for students and parents with questions and concerns.

UNE Libraries could curate a collection of books, articles, and resources about dyslexia and the experiences of people with dyslexia.

UNE CeTL could prioritize its existing professional development efforts related to Universal Design for Learning and Creating a Welcoming, Inclusive Learning Environment, including initiating projects in high-enrollment gateway courses and classes with higher DWF rates.

UNE Student Access could, with additional staffing, take on an advocacy and facilitation role for students with learning disabilities, and an educational role for faculty teaching them.

UNE Academic & Career Advising could designate one or two professional advisors to be "point persons" with specialized training and responsibilities for advising students with learning disabilties.

For dyslexic readers, reading takes much longer and requires much greater effort than for neurotypical readers (Shaywitz and Shaywitz 439). 

Dyslexic writers often have very slow composition rates due to overloaded working memory, making writing a grueling hard-to-sustain process (Herbert 850). 

Dyslexia can be associated with stigmatizing writing issues, such as wrong word and spelling errors, disorganization, and underdeveloped ideas (Herbert 843).

Shaywitz, Sally and Jonathan Shaywitz, Overcoming Dyslexia, 2nd ed., 2022.

Herbert, Michael, et. alia., “Why Children with Dyslexia Struggle with Writing and How to Help Them.” LSHSS 49 (Oct. 2018), 843-863.

Society for Neuroscience, Brain Research Success Stories

Newman, L. A., Madaus, J. W., Lalor, A. R., & Javitz, H. S. "Effect of accessing supports on higher education persistence of students with disabilities." Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 14(3), 353–363. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1037/dhe0000170

Reid, Gavin. Dyslexia: A Practioner's Handbook, 2016.

Kirk, J. and Reid, G. (2003) Adult Dyslexia Checklist: Criteria and Considerations . BDA Handbook. Reading, British Dyslexia Association.