To ask dyslexic team member to put a note on her email signature???

@ConflictofInterest maybe that's just your personality, or you have a toxic work place. I have never experienced that and I have worked in many places, I have never been spoken down to or patronised because I have disclosed my dyslexia immediately, I have done this since day one of my career
I have always felt valued and challenged, I have been given plenty of opportunity, including earning promotions as well as the adjustments I need to make me even better at my job.
Sounds like the place you work needs to do better and you need to do some internal work on why having a learning disability is not embarrassing.

@HairsprayBabe I do cringe because it sounds so apologetic, like they're saying they're so sorry for being dyslexic people need to read their disclaimer before interacting with them. I've noticed a definite difference at work when people know I'm dyslexic, I'm given simpler tasks ironically the sorts of tasks I find much harder being dyslexic like copying and pasting and more complex work is given to other people. Stating it up front like that before people know you just creates a stereotype because they don't know your strengths and weaknesses so they're likely to make assumptions like their writing skills/spelling won't be as good, which slips into 'their understanding won't be as good' and before you know it you're looked over for promotion and people don't take you seriously. Whenever I see it I wince and want to tell them to take it off because it will only count against them. Maybe that is my own prejudices coming through but I've had a life of being discriminated against for being dyslexic shaping my thoughts.

@ConflictofInterest if you seriously "cringe" seeing other people revealing their dyslexia or any other disability then that is on you and your internalised ableism. Peoples brains work in different ways, there is literally nothing to be embarrassed about.

Not to mention spelling and grammar don't matter, are completely made up and consatantly evolving.

I have dyslexia. I use Grammly at work but they don't pay for the subscription cost so I have to use the basic one and get 2 free things a day which isnt helpful. I don't want to use ai as it looks unprofessional. I don't think putting an email signiture saying written by a dyslexic or similar is the best thing to do. If it's a new client they may not connect with the company or they may not use the person based on the difficulty (it has happened to me). Plus it might be personal and they may not want to disclose it to a whole new set of people

I’m dyslexic and can’t see mistakes either, i also struggle with punctuation. I listen to my documents before I send them as hearing mistakes is much easier!

That's great you feel confident about it but I disagree that it's a weird thing to be embarrassed about. It certainly embarrasses me and it makes me cringe for other people seeing it in their email signature. People treat me differently at work once they know I'm dyslexic and they make assumptions that aren't true. I don't think anyone should have to disclose a disability if they aren't comfortable doing it. I'm more comfortable saying I use a screen reader which could be for many reasons but tells them I need documents in an accessible format and explains text to speech errors that may be there.

I would encourage her to use a grammar checker. These are built in to a lot of softwares these days, if not then pay for her grammarly as a reasonable adjustment. She could also use ChatGPT or Gemini but remember to convert in to plain text before pasting in to an email as otherwise it contains the code which gives away it was written by AI (not that most people care but some do)

I find Read and Write Gold really helpful. I like to have it read back to me so I can hear the mistakes.

DD1 been given quite a bit of dsylexic software at University- but even more common microsoft software has a speach to text function so while I can't see the spelling mistakes wrong homophones can hear them easily.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/use-the-speak-text-to-speech-feature-to-read-text-aloud-459e7704-a76d-4fe2-ab48-189d6b83333c

I would have thought basic grammar checking would help with some of the other mistakes.

I'm a chartered accountant. Are you CTA qualfied & a specialist in employment taxes? As a trainee requiring full training & supervision, this person would fail to meet the criteria of being able to provide services rather having a contract of service.

Agreed. I think she said it without thinking it through to deflect criticism from other posters that her workplace haven't provided the trainee with a programme that would assist her in writing emails.

She should be using software to help her, surely.

I think it's ok to expect business emails to be fairly free of spelling and grammar mistakes. Language evolves but spellings generally don't

I'm dyslexic and have it in my email footer.
Weird thing to be embarrassed about - and gives me an excuse to be sloppy sometimes aha

That being said I'm not an uptight perfectionist and all the people I work with internal and external are normal and don't expect me to be a robot.

Also pp suggesting programmes that help - they also don't always work and I never found them helpful or intuitive to work with.

I don’t deny that some people are doing it for legitimate reasons, but having had the misfortune of dealing with a business owner who regularly screwed over her younger staff/trainees by persuading them to go self-employed, yet still setting their working days and hours. She would drop them with no warning when no work came in that day and, of course, they didn’t have a leg to stand on. She encouraged them to go self-employed by offering a slightly higher daily rate than what they would get if they were on minimum wage and would threaten that if they didn’t agree to go self-employed, she’d probably have to shut the shop because she couldn’t afford to pay them. Said business owner was a very wealthy woman with several properties, brand new big car and flying off on exotic holidays several times a year.

I always call it Chat GBT too - it's just easier to say than GPT.

Were you having a bad day yesterday? Or is there some other reason why you felt the need to post such a needlessly unpleasant remark?

Lot's of people have 'Made by dyslexia, expect big thinking and small typos' in their signature block at my work. it seems to be a template they've copied from a Dyslexia support network as it's all exactly the same. No one seems to mind and it does give the reader a heads up. Obviously the employee has to be comfortable to put that on a signature block but it saves having to run everything though an AI software (some workplaces aren't allowed any kind of AI anyway so not always an option)

What software do you have ?

I'm dyslexic but also ADHD so I have a high attention to detail.

I do chuck everything through chatgbt, and soften my emails as I can be quite harsh.

Whilst as a non- dyslexic person it wouldn’t bother me seeing such a signature, it’s likely to be pretty triggering asking her as a dyslexic person to do that.
both my DH and DS are dyslexic and it’s something they both struggle with when pointed out, so I’d be a bit cautious.
definitely investigate the apps.

I would suggest that together you have some standard email texts that she can cut and paste in as appropriate if a lot of emails are sending similar information.

Also useful for busy people as well as people with dyslexia of course so not 'othering' her.

But yes I think adding a note to an email signature is good too - I have one for a voluntary role saying 'volunteer email account - not checked all day every day' which was my way of saying 'your late reply is not my emergency'.

We are not allowed to use external apps like chat but have a secure work AI module that we are encouraged to use. My organisation went from ‘oh we’re a bit nervous of this’ to ‘you must all be using AI for productivity gains’ in about 6 months.

Someone from a company that we deal with has a sign off that says along the lines of

I was made with a heavy sprinkling of Autism and ADHD so please expect to see creative thinking and unusual spelling

Voice typing and AI grammar checking together can make these errors easily correctable. You are not wrong for not wanting people just to think your company just doesn't care about spelling and grammar, but there is really no need for things to be going out with mistakes or for you to tell people.

I have Cerebral Palsy, and lots of people at work do know and I actually have some one-to-one support each week paid for by my employer too. Generally I am very relaxed about people knowing as I would rather people understood than thought I was weird, lazy etc. However I would be appalled by the idea of a blanket statement on a document. It's very impersonal, almost like an apology for being me. I think I would be quite hurt and angry if my line manager suggested something like that. I guess maybe it's about who you feel you are.

I am ME. I have had Cerebral Palsy since birth. While it's disability in words, in reality it adds to the elements of me, like other things do. I'm bad at some things and good at others just like you, and while some of the things are things "most people" are good at, some are things that anyone could be good at. You don't sign off your emails mentioning that you are rubbish at drawing, or dancing, or have never grasped French. My wobbly handwriting, or poor memory, or your colleagues poor spelling is no different to that.

Just tell her to copy and paste the email into Chat GPT. No need for specialist software. Chat GPT will fix it in seconds