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

Also your example isn’t at all like someone with dyslexia. The crass wording doesn’t add any effect to your argument. And yes, many people will read poor grammar and spelling and not immediately assume dyslexia- they will assume the person is stupid and not good at their job. My family are Deaf BSL users. I know what it means to be judged as thick for not writing English fluently.

Regardless, the OP is only seeking to help her employee and I’m sure she can navigate the conversation and find better ways to help her without putting pressure on. She might like the idea, she might not. Some people wear sunflower lanyards, some wouldn’t dream of it.

I actually think a note at the bottom of an email like you mentioned is a really good idea.

There’s nothing wrong with her, she can’t help it and the world needs to accommodate things like this- a note will certainly help.

I don’t see anything in the OP that points towards putting pressure on her. OP knows people who have used the signature tagline to good effect in the past. As her manager, the OP can check in with her employee and raise some possible solutions to this problem.

Because it's illegal for an employer to ask or otherwise put pressure on an employee to disclose a disability.

It doesn't matter what the disability is.

If you had a stoma bag and had to have frequent breaks away from your desk to attend to your stoma bag, meaning you might inconvenience people trying to contact you, would you really be happy being asked to put an email signature saying "forgive my periodic absence I am removing a bag of faeces from my body"? No. You wouldn't, because understandably people would probably look at you differently, or may choose not to interact with you at all, or you may be treated unfavourably or denied opportunities.

That said, usually most people can read an email from someone dyslexic and ascertain that there's a high likelihood the sender is dyslexic without the dyslexic person having to make everybody know they have dyslexia. It doesn't really need pointing out or making into a big deal.

Depends on the job, but writing errors make me uneasy and in some situations (recently when choosing an orthodontist, for example) I have chosen not to use a business where there were numerous mistakes in written English. It smacks of a larger carelessness — not necessarily on behalf of the individual employee, but in the business as a whole. I would have been reassured to have a signature that explained why one particular individual might have made particular mistakes. I also type carelessly in some situations (here, WhatsApp messages) but would always write slowly and check if it was important. I assume that other non-dyslexic people behave similarly.

You can get AI to write your emails but they won’t (unless you’re very skilful) sound like human emails. No software is perfect. I would prefer an explanatory signature.

For everyone suggesting AI or software, wouldn’t it just be nicer for her to have a tagline in her signature and for people to be aware and understanding. Hiding the dyslexia behind software a) slows her down as it’s an extra step in communicating, and b) doesn’t make dyslexia visible and raise awareness.

A tagline in her signature sounds like a great solution but she may not want to. Why not have the conversation with her and put forward options that can help- tagline or AI- and let her choose what she’s comfortable with.

Came here to say this 😂

Was just about to suggest this. Grammarly works really well.

Would I put 'Please forgive my delay in sending this, I have ADHD'. Not a fucking chance 🤣. I might think about it.

You can still do Access to Work as a self employed person.

There will be a million pieced of software that can support with dyslexia at work. Contact someone like Neuro Box. I'm sure there's a dyslexia charity as well that could give you advise. She can also refer herself to Access to Work, the employer only makes a small contribution or nothing depending how big the company is I think.

Get access to work in to support her. It’s free and they can establish (and fund to a point) technology and training that could help.

Grammarly, copilot, chat gpt can all help with this. There is also specialist software (eg. used by education establishments) that can assist. She could also use voice to text software. Really as her employer you should be doing a workplace assessment and providing what she needs as a reasonable adjustment. Asking her to publicly declare her disability is not the answer.

Side note - How can she be a freelance trainee? Are you just trying to wiggle out of providing proper employment benefits.

straitjacket, lets. You probably need a company proofreader.

No. It's a disability. Forcing her to declare it because it inconveniences you, isnt legal.

Find a better solution.

Disclosing your disability on an email footer is a sure fire way to get discriminated against, either intentionally or unintentionally.

You can't ask her to disclose her private medical information to everybody she encounters, and whether she thinks up this idea herself and chooses to do so is entirely up to her.

She’s a trainee but she’s self employed? Sounds dodgy to me

On a side note, if she is a trainee and you are training her from scratch, why is she freelance & self employed? It doesn't sound as though she meets the criteria for being self employed, especially if you have so much control over what she's doing, the training she needs etc. Have you spoken to HMRC about this as you could end up with some large tax bills at your end.

Try getting her to put it through Grammarly. It will pick up the homophones and grammar issues as well as spelling. I know newspaper editors who slam everything through the pro version as a second set of eyes.

How are you training her if she’s self employed?

There’s programmes you can use to make templates/pre written words, paragraphs or what ever you want and then you decide a shortcut you want to use- for example you can have Kreg for kind regards, you get the drift

Might be helpful if she sends similar words/sentences a lot

Self employed - hope that’s legit OP….

I worked with a peer slt manager and they used to have it written casually on their email footer.
It worked, nobody was an arse internal or external

As a dyslexic person I just copy and paste my e-mail into co-pilot (any AI would do) and ask it to just fix the spelling and grammar- works a treat.