Dublin People recently ran an article highlighting the common ignorance about dyslexia.  The article stated, "Nearly half of people surveyed in Dublin did not identify dyslexia as a disability according to research due to be published by the Association for Higher Education Access and Disability (AHEAD).  The data was revealed at a conference on dyslexia that took place in NUI Maynooth last week where international speakers addressed the issue of dyslexia in mainstream education."  Find the complete article at http://www.dublinpeople.com/content/view/1221/55/

This line of thinking is not limited to Dublin.  In fact I believe that this sort of ignorance about dyslexia is even more prevelant in the USA.  The irony is that while people still believe that dyslexia is a sign of lower intellegence, many of historys greatest thinkers, inventors, businessmen, and politians have been dyslexic.

The bottom line is that we simply have much more educating to do regarding the nature of dyslexia.

On October 30^th 2008 the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco, California ruled that dyslexic medical students taking the Medical College Admission Test (MCAD) do not qualify to receive reasonable accommodations for their disability.

The entire ruling can be found at: http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/A117071.PDF

This is, of course a step back in the area of discrimination for dyslexics.  Based on the language of the ruling I believe that the three panel court does not adequately understand the nature of dyslexia.

One point that I find interesting is the concept of “equal access.”  Clearly if a medical student was denied access to the MCAD because he or she could not physically get to the testing location (i.e. having a disability requiring an elevator instead of walking up stairs) this would be a violation.  However the access required for the dyslexic is non-physical (i.e. more time needed to take a test or write an essay).

Perhaps if the court understood the nature of dyslexia they would realize that providing someone who is unable to climb stares with an elevator and providing someone who is unable to quickly process phonemes more time for testing are both providing “equal access.”

The TimesOnline had another good article about the genetic nature of dyslexia.  Below is a part of it, go to http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article5006527.ece  for the entire article.

Tony Monaco, a scientist at the Wellcome Centre Trust for Human Genetics, Oxford University, believes that our ability to spell lies partly in our DNA. “Around 60 per cent of the variation in the ability to spell lies in our genes,” he says.

But how can our genetic make-up affect our ability to remember that “I goes before E except after C”? Professor Monaco says that our genes dictate how our brain develops. In his study, his lab tracked the development of 6,000 children born in the early Nineties. Previous studies highlighted a particular gene that might affect reading ability, which goes by the rather catchy name of KIAA0319. We all carry it, but he found that 15per cent of the population have a slightly different version than normal. According to Professor Monaco, the normal version of the gene helps to guide brain cells into the cortex, the thinking part of the brain, when a child is developing in the womb. When the gene is different, however, it is unable to properly fulfil its function; brain cells get lost on the journey and end up in the wrong place. “This may disrupt the processing of information,” he says.

But what exactly is going on in our brain when we are asked to spell a word? Considering that we’ve had 5,000 years to figure this out, we are still pretty much in the dark as to how it handles spelling. What we do know, says Professor Stein, is that there are two main processes at work. The brain thinks of what the word looks like – how it appears on the page – and how the word sounds – its phonology. The contributions of each of these factors to spelling is a subject of fierce debate, with some arguing that the visual component is key and others championing the sound of the word as most important.

What the experts do seem to agree on is that the visual and phonetic information are fed into our mental dictionary, our lexicon. This is in an area just above our ear, called the angular gyrus. Processing all the visual and phonetic information, it quickly tells us how to spell the word. This information then zips across to the part of the brain that controls movement and we write or say the word.

The brain’s spelling circuitry is located in its left side, probably because it is more efficient to have our mental dictionary in close proximity to the areas that control speech and writing. However, in left-handed people, these areas are usually on the right, as these tasks are performed on this side. But why do some words prove harder to spell than others? After all, who hasn’t at some point tripped over the spellings of accommodation or embarrassed? These words are difficult because they have illogical spellings, and simply don’t follow the rules, says Stein.