Dyslexia, Dictionaries, Fonts & Learning

There is a new dictionary coming out at some point in 2015, many people may not think that this news is particularly earth-shattering as dictionaries are printed and published all over the world. The thing that makes this one special is that it is aimed squarely at people with dyslexia.

Known as the Maple Mayes Dictionary after the school where the idea has been in development for quite some time.

Father and son duo Dr Neville and Dr Daryl Brown have dedicated their lives to developing new methods that can help children to overcome dyslexia – a pursuit that led them to open specialist Staffordshire-based teaching and research centre, Maple Hayes Dyslexia School, in 1982.

Now, after almost 25 years analysing the way dyslexics learn, the Browns have decided to rewrite the dictionary after identifying that its layout, which is biased towards phonetic language, proves to be a huge stumbling block for youngsters with dyslexia. The traditional dictionary – as its name indicates – was originally a tool primarily to promote the correct pronunciation of words.

This is fantastic news; I work with a number of dyslexic students and am excited at the thought of being able to offer a new resource to help them learn.

I found out about the dictionary while reading an article on the NPR website about dyslexic fonts and their development.

The Dyslexie font has been around for quite some time, but reading about it and how it works has given me a new appreciation for the amount of work that has gone into its development, I was also not properly aware of how it worked, apart from the font being weighted – but that is only a part of how it makes words easier to read.

How the font works: