Help— Orthographic/ Surface dyslexia

[Moomilk]

My 7 year old daughter has just been diagnosed with this type of dyslexia and I’m looking for others experience or knowledge as there doesn’t seem to be much chat around this type of dyslexia. Any help would be fantastic.

Orthographic dyslexia is where a person has good phonological skills but has difficulty with the visual recognition of words. Phonological awareness is where recognise the different sounds of language and then map them to letters. Your child apparently doesn’t struggle with this and is therefore fine with regularly spelled words. However she will struggle with irregular spelling eg something with a silent letter. I would imagine she will be fine in reading but may find writing and spelling more challenging as she will have to retrieve the words from her memory.

Dyslexics are often very strong visual spatial picture thinkers. If you imagine a mug it remains a mug whichever way you view it. However dyslexics often rotate letters in the same way, which is particularly problematic for symmetrical letters like b d p q. If you rotate these letters they are the same shape! Install dyslexia friendly fonts on her devices like open dyslexic a free font with asymmetric letters and strong baseline. Comic sans also good. Ron Davis ‘The Gift of Dyslexia’ is an interesting read on this subject and making letters from clay or other mediums also helps to master the skill. Christian Boer Ted Talk on his dyslexie font also explains it.