University support for dyslexia

[Ineedcoffeenow]

DD is dyslexic and she really struggles with reading, in particular. She is due to start uni in September. What I’m wondering is what kind of support do people in her situation receive at university? I’m aware that it will differ across institutions, which is why I’m posting. I’d like to hear the different ways that universities approach the problem.

My son is dyslexic and receives dsa. He got a laptop to type essays on.

they offered study support (a meeting once a week to talk through what work he had on and how to approach it) but he didn’t take that up.

Apply for dsa when she submits Student Finance. This can be used to fund dictation or recording software or other tech, mentoring sessions and so on. A Needs Assessment is used to identify appropriate adjustments. Might be worth a conversation with the uni student support team to get organised ahead of September

What course is she planning? Our experience in STEM is very different to essay based subjects.

Absolutely apply for DSA. Dragon software is good for dictation and adapts to your voice as you go along, she should be able to use Grammarly, ours had a subscription for UG students, that's worth looking into. There's a lot of support in general if you engage with the disability offices.

If she has firmed her first choice, it's worth getting in touch now with the disability office. If not, I'd contact her top three or so for a chat so she can see the lie of the land.

Many thanks for those replies. I’ve take a look at DSA (or equivalent as we’re in Scotland). She has accepted a conditional offer. I wanted to speak to someone about this at the offer holder’s day, but we ran out of time. I’ll look at their contact details for the support services.

@handmademitlove it’s for film—ie filmmaking, not film studies. It’s 70% practical work doing the various roles in film. 30% is essay based looking at theory, history etc of film. I’m sure she’ll do great on the practical side, but the essay based work might be harder.

Sounds like a fun course! Definitely contact them, the earlier it's done, the more can be in place for week one, otherwise I've seen it become a bit of an nightmare in that there are lots of applications going in at the last minute and the team get stretched. They will have good advice on the most appropriate provision for her needs. Ideally she'd contact them rather than you, but you could compose the email together, then she could speak to them.

I worked closely with our disability team and they really do want to help.

Ensure you forward a couple of her diagnosis and the strategies needed to the uni. They should offer a discount on any computer or resources but we found the specialist computer they applied the discount for was over £2k and the discount was about £400. We plumped for a normal one at £600 which she had used for her other studies.

she was allowed additional time if needed but we found getting the work in early was better and to use the additional time for any changes if the score was too low. Using the extra time to get a first draught in means you have to accept the score.

They kept copies of her diagnosis on her record.

she only needed to use it again for her first job.

Essay based, while obviously tricky, is actually easier than STEM. Text to speech and speech to text work well and software should be accessible. This doesn't work so well with maths and formulas!
My DD also had access to the RNIB bookvault - you can download textbooks or research papers and change the font / size/ line spacing to help with reading recommended texts. Definitely worth asking about.

She also has a support plan which specifies sans serif fonts as she struggles with serif fonts and italics. The university may have a standard style sheet which means all materials are in sans serif anyway, but if not you can request this as a reasonable adjustment .

Thank you so much.

So is there software that can read a piece of text out to her? She uses it for reading out her own work in Word, but I wasn’t aware if there is software that would do that for an ebook, for example. She also uses a purple background. She takes so long to read things—it’s been Ok-ish so far, but she’s going to have to do a lot more reading at uni and I know that will slow her down.

Would you contact them now, or wait to see whether she gets in/gets the grades?

Dragon can do for some e books, but the disability team will know what works best for their library. I'd have an initial chat soon, just to see what can be done. And with the insurance offer. Best of luck to her!

She should also take up any offerings from Lesrning Support officers, many departments have them and they have more subject specific knowledge.