Tips to make reading tasks accessible for students with dyslexia

Some reading tasks can be difficult to access for students with dyslexia if they haven’t been designed taking into account their needs. There are quick and easy-to-make adjustments that teachers can make that will benefit their students with reading difficulties as well as everyone else

What is dyslexia?

Dyslexia is a learning difficulty that primarily affects the skills involved in accurate and fluent word reading and spelling (Vellutino et al., 2004; Snowling , 2008; Snowling et al., 2007).

When it comes to learning a language, students with dyslexia can have difficulties with phonological awareness, verbal memory, verbal processing speed and decoding (e.g., Byrne, 1998; Muter et al., 2004; Bowey, 2005).

Dyslexia is not linked to a person’s intelligence so it occurs across a range of intellectual abilities. Learners can be more or less severely dyslexic as dyslexia is a continuum.

Dyslexia can also impact executive function, particularly in areas like working memory, attention, and inhibition, because of how the brain processes information. These executive function challenges can make reading, decoding, and comprehension more difficult.

Strategies to support dyslexic students during reading tasks

Considering the areas that our dyslexic students will need support in, we can summarise some key adjustments that will make reading tasks more accessible for them as they will become more appealing and manageable, easier to understand, and key information will stand out.

Basic formatting

• Font. Use dyslexia friendly font which should always be non-italic, evenly spaced and ‘sans serif’ as Open Dyslexic, Aptos, Arial and Comic Sans. Alternatives include Verdana, Tahoma, Century Gothic, Trebuchet.

• Font size. Minimum12-14 point. Some dyslexic readers may request a larger font.

• Line spacing should also be at least 1.5 points.
  
• Contrast between background and writing should be strong enough, especially on a screen. However, it’s also important not to choose very bright colours to prevent glare and visual fatigue. For the same reason, it’s recommended to chose alternatives to white for the background such as off-white or cream colour.
  
• Printing the reading task and question on different pages so that learners can look at the questions and text at the same time. This will minimize the amount of information to hold in their working memory as they’ll be easily able to glance back at the questions while reading the text.

• Breaking down the text. An alternative to the previous measure, is breaking down the text and including the comprehension question after the corresponding paragraph. This will help students hold their attention as they will be reading shorter chunks of text before every question.
  
• Marking keywords in bold, both in the questions and in the text.
  
• Short, simple and staged task instructions both orally and in writing. Check the European easy-to-read guidelines for inclusion here.

Additional support before and during the reading task

• Providing students with a glossary of terms and going through them together. Speak about what context they can be used in and elicit examples of sentences. Keeping the glossary in a visible place and encouraging them to consult it during the task.
  
• Elicit possible answers to the questions before reading the text. Ask students to produce and write down synonyms to the keywords in the questions as these might be the ones they’ll find in the text. Getting them used to doing this will train them to do so in all reading tasks autonomously.
  
• Giving additional time to those students who need it or reducing the number of questions for everyone and assigning ‘stretching questions’ to those who need an extra challenge.
  
• Giving all learners the opportunity to use reading rulers or L-shaped windows to help them focus only on a part of the text at a time. The rulers can be bought online, and the reading windows can be easily made by cutting out an L-shape from a piece of card.
  
• Linking the reading task to students’ interests, if possible. This will improve the students’ motivation to read it and, as a result, the use of their executive functions.
• Use a hook to make students curious about the reading if it’s not possible to choose the topic of the task itself. You can do this by showing a short video related to it, getting them to think about an interesting aspect of it, or have a short debate about the topic before starting the reading.

• Break down the reading task if it’s long. Allow students to take toilet breaks or program a break for everyone in the middle of the task which could be having a small conversation about what they’ve read in pairs, checking their answers together, playing a short vocabulary game or watching a short fun video related to the topic.

All of these adjustments will especially benefit students with dyslexia and other neurodivergences or reading difficulties. But it’s important for teachers to try to apply them- or at least most of them- with the whole class as they will have a positive impact on everyone’s attention, motivation, working memory and, ultimately, performance.