Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Dyslexia Accommodations!

If you have a dyslexic kid or are starting to investigate whether or not your kid may have dyslexia, you probably have come across the term accommodations. Today we are going to discuss what accommodations are and the variety of accommodations that you might want to consider.

Hey everyone, we're Nick and Sonja wearing our Eclipse shirts today. It was awe-inspiring. We did see it. And this is Dyslexia Journey, and today we're going to cover what accommodations are and the various types. There's really lots of them that you might want to consider for your kid. And, you know, accommodations apply to all kinds of situations, the school, the workplace. Today, in the way we're going to talk about it, it's going to be mostly about school.

Yeah, so some of you watching and listening are going to be very familiar with accommodations already. Some of you, this may be the first time you're hearing about it, some of you may have started to hear about it and are just looking into it. And so this is kind of a level-set episode. We want to make sure, because there's a lot of confusion out there about accommodations, so we just want to make sure that everyone understands what we mean by accommodations.

And then what are some common accommodations that your child might be able to get, at least in the U.S., in school. And then some less common ones, too. So even if you feel like you kind of know what accommodations are, you might want to keep watching, because we are going to cover some of those less common ones as well. Yeah, so let's jump in and talk about kind of the goal of accommodations in general.

And so there's a formal definition from the International Dyslexia Association that we can link to. But we'll just summarize kind of the four component parts of the purpose of accommodations. And so the first aspect of this is that accommodations are supposed to ensure equal access. And so the best way to think about this is by analogy with accommodations for a physical disability. For example, a wheelchair ramp that's next to a staircase.

And so a wheelchair ramp next to a staircase will allow someone who is using a wheelchair to have equal access to wherever that staircase leads. Right. And so in the case of a dyslexic kid, the idea would be that you are providing equal access both to the learning and to what they're able to demonstrate that they know and have learned. Right. So the second purpose of accommodations that kind of flows from what I just said is that it doesn't actually change the content of what is happening.

Like in this case, we're talking about school. So it doesn't change the content of what is being learned. The dyslexic kid would be learning the same material as everyone else. And it doesn't change the expectations either of what they're expected to be able to demonstrate. Right. Although it'll sound a little, I mean, there's still like going to be tweaks to that as we cover what the accommodations are in the sense of like how they demonstrate it will be potentially different.

But it's essentially that they are also supposed to demonstrate their learning just like other kids would. And that actually leads to the third component of accommodations, which is that while it doesn't change the content that's learned or the expectations around what the child is expected to be able to demonstrate, it can and often does adjust the ways in which the child is expected to learn and the ways in which the child is expected to demonstrate mastery of that material.

And so we'll talk more about specifics of that later. But for example, a child with dyslexia might be allowed to take longer on an exam. It's the exact same exam with the exact same questions, but it might be adjusted for that child's learning difference to allow them to take a little bit longer. Right. And so the fourth and final component of the purpose of accommodations that we'll cover here is that they're specifically not about some sort of unfair advantage.

So the intention as in point one is that they give equal access. So, you know, similar again to the idea of physically having access, like having a wheelchair ramp in order for someone to get into a building. The idea is to more like level the playing field. So we're talking about equity here and equal access. Great. So now that we're kind of on the same page about the goal of accommodations, let's let's talk about some specific accommodations that your dyslexic kid might be able to get in school.

So we have eight of these more common accommodations that your dyslexic kid might be able to get in school as part of their accommodations. And the first one really is that that extra time that we were just starting to talk about. And we feel like this is usually for most people, the most important one. A little caveat here. So actually, one of our dyslexic voices interviewees mentioned this, Julia Wild. So you can look at that interview with her if you'd like.

She mentioned that it did not help her to have extra time because there were other aspects where she still wasn't able to access the information. So she was still having trouble understanding the questions, for example. And so if there's some sometimes other components have to be in place for the extra time to make sense. However, with that said, it is usually extremely important just because it's going to take them longer. Yeah. And I think to kind of paraphrase what what Julia said is she said, you know, all the extra time in the world wasn't going to help me like figure out this content because of other issues.

But I think the key point around extra time is to kind of reverse that. So so even a dyslexic child who knows the material just as well as a non dyslexic child is is almost I mean, I don't want to be completely categorical, but but almost always not going to be able to demonstrate that knowledge as quickly as someone without dyslexia. If it involves any amount of reading or writing. Right. Because reading usually takes them longer.

Right. Or or going having to sometimes go back and parse out the meaning. All of that can take longer the whole process. Yeah. So that's why we believe that the extra time is so fundamental. Right. And that usually looks like at least in the United States, like time and a half. There is such a thing as double time, but it's it's much harder to get. So that's just something to keep in mind.

Yeah. And so so time and a half is in our experience and the experience of most people we've talked to fairly commonly given to people with learning differences. Yes. Okay. So the second accommodation that's pretty common for kids with dyslexia in schools is to allow access to audio materials instead of written materials. So this might look like if they if your child is in a language arts class and they are reading a novel, they would be allowed to listen to the novel on as an audio book rather than reading it themselves.

Or they would be allowed to have a parent or a friend read it to them. Right. And I think it's good to point out here because somebody might be wondering, well, don't they need the practice reading? Right. But that's a separate thing. So how they're, you know, getting better and strengthening their reading skills and whatever methods, you know, are being used for that is separate from this because this is more about the sort of volume of material.

So it has partly to do with that it takes them longer. It takes them so much energy. So it's really a lot to do with that, that they can they can get it in an efficient way that's more equal to their classmates. Yeah. Another way to think about this is, is to think about what the goal of reading that novel is in that language arts class. The goal of reading that novel is not for kids to practice their word decoding.

The goal of reading that novel is to give kids practice exposure to story and to talk about aspects of story like characters and themes and plot. And you can get all of that from an audio book. The same is from reading it yourself. And I would argue that's even true for vocabulary. Maybe it's good for them, you know, to see the word and maybe they have a vocabulary list. But in terms of learning in context, you're going to get that from the auditory version as well.

Yeah. And this can apply to all content, not just not just novels. Those are probably what people are most familiar with for audio format because audio books have really proliferated lately. But there are apps such as Speechify. And we did interview Cliff Weitzman, the founder of Speechify, a few months ago. So we'll link to that interview as well. But there are apps like that that can actually read almost any content to you.

So you can use it to read your textbooks to you, even if there's not an audio version of those textbooks or any random web page. And so really the way the accommodation comes in is that the teachers shouldn't be something that you have to hide from the teachers. Like this should be an official accommodation with the school where the teachers agree that, OK, this this child can have the book read to them or listen to the audio book or whatever.

Yes. So the third kind of accommodation that's pretty common for a dyslexic kid is being able to type rather than handwrite. So sometimes this is because there's associate there's also dysgraphia. But it's also because of it just sometimes being easier in terms of for their writing that they can get it out faster, their thoughts. And, you know, again, because it's going to take longer maybe in terms of getting the thoughts organized and that and that kind of thing.

And then, of course, sometimes handwriting would be harder to read. And so there's that aspect in there. So there's kind of a variety of reasons all the way from, you know, a co a co condition like that. They have like a co difference, I guess I should say, like dysgraphia to simply helping with that time aspect again. Yeah. And this is key because I'm thinking back to the interview we did with Linda Silverman that, you know, one of the criteria that she uses in diagnosing kids with dyslexia is the difference in their ability to convey complex ideas and thoughts, either orally versus handwritten or typed versus handwritten.

And it can be really, really be quite striking, even for kids who don't have dysgraphia also. Right. Exactly. Yeah. This is also a fairly easy accommodation to get in the U.S. because devices are just used in almost every school now. Every seems like middle school, well, definitely every high school, some middle school, every child is issued or required to buy a laptop or an iPad or something like that. And I think there's there's devices available in most elementary schools now as well.

Yes. Yeah. OK, so our fourth, the fourth accommodation that is pretty common for dyslexic kids in school is to is for those kids to be provided with modified materials. And that's kind of a big statement. So what do we mean by that? So one example of that is if a teacher is lecturing and this is going to be kind of like junior high, middle school, high school level, not as common in elementary school, the children might be expected to take notes on that material.

And that's going to be really hard for a dyslexic kid to do and to keep up with absorbing the material. It's generally more effective for a dyslexic kid to just try to listen and absorb and then have access to somebody else's notes or to the teacher's own notes about what they were going to say. And sometimes that might look like sometimes it can still involve some note taking, you know, skills because it can be these partially filled out kind of notes.

Yeah, that's really useful, like in middle school to have to have if the teacher has prepared like notes, but then sort of taken out some of the keywords and then the kid can kind of fill them in.

It isn't always possible, you know, depending on the teacher and the specific material, but it's definitely worth asking about and having. And even if a particular teacher doesn't have it, having it in the accommodations to start with, you know, makes it such that you can ask about it and see if it is that. Yeah. And by high school, I mean, kids can usually just sort of ask their friends for their notes.

But again, it's really important for it to be official, if possible, to actually talk to the school and get it in writing from the school so that it doesn't come up where they're accused of cheating or the friend gets in trouble for giving them the notes or something. Right. Because sometimes teachers don't care at all about that and sometimes they actually consider the note taking as part of the assignment. So it's important to get that straight and to definitely have it as an official accommodation.

Yeah. And so and then to emphasize this point and take it a little further, they, in addition to not being required to, like, take notes from a lecture, they also shouldn't be required to copy down stuff from a board. You know, some people will think, oh, that's that's easier. They don't have to process it verbally and translate it to language. They could just copy what's on the board. But that's still very difficult for a dyslexic kid to do.

You know, they're going to miss words. Yeah. Well, I mean, because if you actually are copying, if you think about it, it sounds like, oh, just copy it. But if you if you aren't thinking about the content at the same time in the meaning, it's very easy for any of us to miss words then because it doesn't we're not trying to think about the meaning. We're just, you know, just wrote copying it.

And often what's on the board is like the homework assignment for that day. And so if they miscopy that, they're going to be doing the wrong homework. And that could really become problematic.

Most in our experience, most teachers will allow someone with dyslexia or really almost generally all students to actually just take a picture of what's on the board. That's the the way that kind of that our daughter's been dealing with that accommodation in high school. That that is super useful. Also, most schools in the U.S. now at least use online systems where the homework and stuff is available in the online system. So it hasn't become as big a problem.

But it's just something to keep in mind if if your school particularly doesn't allow the kids to have their phones in class so they won't have access to their camera. And maybe a little more so at younger ages, too, because it's a little there's less of the intricate systems, you know, that they're looking at for their homework and all the assignments when they're younger. But it really is actually a useful part of having those systems.

You know, once they really get familiar with them, they can use them really easily. And then they just know right where to look for assignments and materials and things like that. Yeah. And then the last component of modified materials is if there are cases where, again, this is more, you know, middle school, high school level where something is read or the kids are expected to, like, read a, say, a poem or something in class and then have a discussion about it.

So it's really helpful if there's going to be a class lesson like that to have that whatever it is they're supposed to read. Maybe it's an essay for, you know, a social studies class or something to have that provided ahead of time so they can read it ahead of time because it's going to take them longer to read and understand it. And then they'll still be reading it while everyone else is writing about it or discussing it.

Right. OK, so the fifth kind of accommodation that your dyslexic kid might have that we want to talk about today is not having to read out loud in class. So this this maybe sounds obvious because I think we can all sort of imagine that there's a lot of potential emotion or potential embarrassing moments around that. But it's still really important to actually have down because a lot of times teachers are thinking of it a little differently.

They're thinking of it like, well, we can all be encouraging or we can, you know, we'll help them get better at it. You know, like so if there's that kind of thing going on, it can be that can be really stressful, actually, for a dyslexic kid. They need to know not that they wouldn't ever do it. Maybe they want to volunteer sometime, but that it's up their choice and that that's up to them and that the default is that they're never called on to read in class is really important.

Yeah, as we discussed in a recent another recent episode, these well-meaning teachers are going to often think it's their job to push your child, to push all kids, you know, to to to grow. Right. And so that's going to in their mind that often involves pushing them a little bit past their comfort zone. And so it's important, again, to get this as an official accommodation, to understand that this isn't it's not the same as someone without dyslexia, you know, for someone with dyslexia, this there's there's so much around that.

And reading aloud in class can be really, you know, traumatic. And I mean, of course, you can make an argument separately about, you know, people who feel more self-conscious reading anyway. Maybe they should have an accommodation for a different reason. But just in this case, we're talking about it specific for dyslexic kids that it's important. Yeah. So the sixth accommodation that your dyslexic kid might have or want to get put in place that we're going to talk about today is not being penalized for spelling or grammatical mistakes.

And I'm going to pull in here to being allowed to use spellcheck and grammar check. So that can often like stave off a lot of it. But sometimes even using those, there can be some of that mixed in there. And it's really important because it just is so much a part of, you know, what dyslexic kids face is that that those just don't come naturally, even sometimes when they've done a lot of practice and and drilling on it.

And and and and it's and if it's not what's being actually taught, like if the spelling is not what is actually being taught, if you think about it, if it's really about like what they're producing and what they're saying and their ideas, you can see that it's like important to separate that out from the spelling and the grammar. And so then it brings up the thing, though, like what if it is a particular test on, let's say, spelling?

So in that case, maybe it's something that they wouldn't have to do. It's possible. OK, but if they do have to, then it's going to be around things like seeing if you can help teach them in a different way. So it's going to go more towards not accommodations, but just things like maybe they can be taught it in a song. Maybe they can be taught it more physically to help reinforce those letters.

But just knowing that that's always going to be more difficult and that it definitely needs to be separated out from the content that they're trying to demonstrate in other areas that don't really have to do with spelling or grammar. And again, I guess the grammar piece to that can get tricky because some people feel like that just is part of good writing. But it's still separate from there's definitely some learning like mixed in there that makes it more complicated.

But, you know, in terms of making an analytical points, for example, it really is different. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Two things I thought of while you were saying that one is for the younger kids, this is actually important at any age. And I'm just thinking about I've seen far too many examples of parents of dyslexic kids, of young dyslexic kids, ages six, seven, eight, nine, posting examples of their of their essays where the kid just wrote spelled everything phonetically.

So like every word is misspelled. But if you take the time to actually look at what they're what they're saying or what they wrote, it can be very interesting or profound. But but there are far too many examples I've seen of essays just graded with an F or whatever, because the teacher didn't even bother to try to, you know, go through and understand what the child was trying to say. They just said, oh, everything's misspelled. This is terrible. Yeah.

And so that's really I mean, I don't think we need to say how damaging that can be to a child's self-esteem and stuff. And so that's why it's so important to get this accommodation in place really even as early as you can. Yes. And like I said, it may be possible to actually reduce the amount amount of words they have to learn. For example, maybe they do do spelling, but they don't have a less long list or they're really focusing on the ones that, you know, are the really common words that dyslexic people often get wrong.

You know, whatever that is, it it's going to probably look different, but not. But to try to tease apart, you know, the content from the grammar and the spelling. Yeah. And the other thing I thought of is foreign languages. I mean, where I think you're alluding to that a little bit, where the spelling and the grammar is a large part of what is being taught when you learn a foreign language. So that does get tricky into how to how to kind of handle this accommodation within the foreign language classes.

And we actually have a whole episode on foreign languages. Right. Right. Yeah. OK. The seventh pretty common accommodation for kids with dyslexia is to not that they're not supposed to have to use a scantron. And so a scantron is a system that some of you may be super familiar with and some of you may not be familiar with it all. It's it's it's essentially a way to take a test where instead of writing the answers in the the near the questions, you have to fill in a multiple choice bubble on a separate sheet.

And so that is very tricky for dyslexic kids to mark the correct answer there rather than just circling something, but also to make sure that they're marking the correct answer on the same question that they just did. Right. Right. Because like, for example, in this with dyslexic kids and they're reading often they're having trouble staying on the same line, things like that. And so you can see how when it's all about lines on the small little forum, it's very really hard to keep track and make sure the bubbles in the right place.

Yeah. I mean, most people are probably familiar with scantrons from voting. It's kind of a similar thing where you have to fill in a bubble. But when you at least in the U.S. ballots, the names are right there next to the options that you're filling in. Scantrons in school, there's nothing on the scantron form that indicates what answer that's mapping to. Right. It's just the number of the question and then the lines ABCD like that.

And so, you know, not using scantrons at all would be ideal. But another potential accommodation would be that they're at least allowed to write in the textbook, text booklet as well. And that that gets turned in as well, because that way, you know, if it if they really think that they should have gotten an answer right, it can be double checked by the teacher and they have that proof that they did it that way.

So a final common accommodation we're going to talk about today for dyslexic kids in school is being able to during a test to go up and ask the teacher a question. You know, sometimes kids do that anyway, trying to clarify a question on test, but maybe just a little more extensively, like perhaps even having the teacher read the question just to make sure that they got it all, you know, got it right.

All the because sometimes when when sentences are like worded a little awkwardly or that kind of thing that can actually affect understanding more so with a dyslexic person. And so making maybe reading the question and just have it being able to understand a little more what the teacher wants from the question. Yep. All right. So those are the eight sort of in our experience, the most common accommodations that your child might be likely to be able to get in school.

So now we're going to go through a few less common accommodations. We'll go through these a little more quickly, but I think it's important just to kind of raise this in your consciousness because it never hurts to ask. Right. OK, so the first less common accommodation for kids with dyslexia that we're going to talk about today is pre-recording presentations. And so this is something that we talked about this, I think, in previous episodes, but it's it's something that teachers are less willing to give because teachers often feel like learning to do oral presentations in front of an audience is one of the things that they are trying to teach and to give students experience with.

But it's something that we have had success with for our daughter. Most of your teachers have allowed her to pre-record presentations and then, you know, present that or show that to the class. And this will be somewhat individual for a kid. Some of some maybe a particular kid really likes to memorize presentations and doesn't mind giving them. But the reason it comes up specific to dyslexic kids is because often you're allowed, you know, like a note card with an outline or something like that or a few keywords.

And that itself is harder for someone to do. It's harder for them to have like a fluid presentation and be looking occasionally at a note like that for the same reason as the Scantron, right? Just finding the plate, finding their place that fast and reading the material and making it all flow. So that is why for that particular one. So a second less common accommodation for a dyslexic kid in school is reduced homework.

So the thought behind this, you know, it's partly because it's just can be such a load when it takes so much more time for a dyslexic kid to do it. But it's also really about the fact that they may be able to show their mastery of something with a reduced load of homework, particularly if something's more repetitive. And so if they're able to do that and it takes them longer anyway than others, you can see how then that can be more that equity kind of thing where it's the leveling the playing field.

Yeah. I mean, one great example of this that most teachers already do in elementary school, which is, you know, like younger kids, six to 12, is instead of saying, you know, when kids are sort of learning to read, instead of saying, okay, you have to read 20 pages, they'll say, you have to read, like, spend like 20 minutes every night reading. And so that's like the same. So everyone's spending the same amount of time on it.

And someone with dyslexia might read fewer pages than someone without dyslexia. Right. And to clarify, that's when they're just practicing reading in general. So it's not about everyone's trying to finish the same amount of thing. It's really just about practicing reading. So, yeah. So going by time obviously makes it more equitable. And so in high school or in middle school, you can try to ask for something like that. Like for math homework, if, you know, if the teacher expects this math assignment to take an hour, you can ask for, okay, if my kid spends an hour on it and still isn't done, then they can stop.

Rather than having to struggle for three hours trying to get every last problem done. Right. But then again, it probably would be a little more, like, specific than that, too, because it may be that there's different kinds of problems. And they'd say, well, make sure you do the, you know, a few of each kind of problem or that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. And I will say this isn't something that we've had a lot of success with in getting accommodations around.

But other people who we've talked to have. Yeah. So it's definitely worth looking into. Yeah. All right. So another less common accommodation involves kind of math and science classes more than maybe language arts and social studies. And that is kind of twofold. One is being allowed to use a four function calculator for all math, even on the no calculator sections. This is something that, again, you're going to get a lot of pushback about this, because a lot of teachers feel like it's super important for kids to be able to do mental arithmetic and that they shouldn't need a calculator to figure out what nine plus seven is.

And we should clarify that we're talking about not when they're learning addition. We're talking about when it's a level where they're learning something where, let's say, addition is part of it. But it's really a much more complicated. Yeah. Like, basically, once they get to, you know, pre-algebra level and beyond, maybe, where the arithmetic isn't the important part anymore, the important part is more advanced concepts. And the arithmetic is just stuff you need to do to demonstrate those more advanced concepts.

So we really believe that, basically, what we've seen is with dyslexic kids that they, you know, often make little mistakes with the arithmetic, even if they understand the concept. And so this is just a way to help them out in order to be able to focus on what the class is actually about. Right, exactly. And that they're demonstrating those higher concepts. Yeah. And then the second kind of math-related point is being able to earn partial credit for work that might be partially correct, rather than just all or nothing correct answer.

Because, again, dyslexic kids, especially when you get to higher level math, pre-algebra and things like that, and higher, they tend to, and this is a broad generalization, but they do tend to kind of grasp the concepts pretty easily, but then struggle with the actual manipulation and arithmetic because of that dyslexia. And so being able to get partial credit for demonstrating a correct concept, but not arriving at a correct answer is super key there.

Yes. And then a final, less common accommodation that you might want to consider for your dyslexic kid is having them actually be tested orally. So that may sound really outside the box, but, like, PhD students even have oral exams, for example. So it really is a valid way of measuring what someone has learned, you know, depending, of course, on what it is a little bit, what's being tested. But it's, and, you know, I don't think we've found this to be, like, very, very commonly done either.

A lot, mainly because it obviously requires, like, a lot of one-on-one. I mean, it means the teacher or whoever would be administering the exam has to be just one-on-one with your kid the whole time. But it's definitely worth considering, especially if there's a particular exam that it feels like it would be so much better on. Why not, like, see if that could be a possibility? Or sometimes, this is maybe what you were going to say, sometimes it can look just like a particular question, which makes it a lot easier.

Teachers are more likely to be okay with that. If there's a particular question and the student's just really having trouble getting it out in written form, could they go up and say it to the teacher what their answer is? Yeah. Yeah. So those are examples of accommodations that we've had some experience with. We'd be interested to hear if there are ones that we've forgotten here or ones that you have had experience with.

Go ahead and put those in the comments. And hopefully this was helpful.