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

[FusionChefGeoff]

For the record I am NOT going to do this but I’m interested in other people’s views on this and decided to brave the AIBU format.

Ive been working with a fab new trainee for about a year now. It’s my own micro business and I’m training her from scratch, so to speak. She’s quite severely dyslexic, is very open about it with me and others we work with and we regularly have discussions around what I can do to make everything easier for her. Including redirecting some work that would normally sit with her job role because it’s unfair to expect her to ever get to the standard we would need. (To do with data management where we need precision and speed - and she just can’t see mistakes / typos)

Generally, attention to detail is important in our overall work and she and I have developed lots of strategies to support her which generally involves quite a lot of other people’s time checking with her.

However, there are still lots of mistakes in her emails to clients and I can’t justify having to sign off every email she sends it’s just not feasible. It’s also not nice for her feeling like she’s working in a straight jacket the whole time. Things that spell checks obviously aren’t picking up like apostrophes where they’re not needed or using the wrong homophones.

Ive worked with other people in the past who have an unobtrusive line ‘Forgive any spelling errors which my dyslexia may have caused” or something similar which I think ‘let’s them off the hook’ as it stops people judging them purely based on spelling.

If you’re dyslexic do you / would you use this approach? Or do you keep your dyslexia to yourself as it’s no one else’s business?

Genuinely looking for thoughts.

As I said I am NOT going to suggest this to her.

I would love any tips or ideas how to help her improve the accuracy and quality of emails - although generally she’s very good at using tools and software to help so maybe I just need to explore what she’s doing for emails and if she has anything else she can use more regularly.

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)

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?

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

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

She should be using software to help her, surely.

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.

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.

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

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)

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’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!

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

@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.

@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 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.