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Breaking through dyslexia
We are dedicated to improving literacy and lives for Dyslexics of all ages, with tailored programs designed to engage and inspire.
I began working in IT in 1980, having started doing some programming (in Fortran) in 1973 while at school. I had worked mainly in the Banking and Finance industries: was part of the team that put the first ATM in New Zealand and on the project to implement the first in-branch Transaction Capture for banking transactions. I saw bank tansactions go from 5 day processing, to overnight, then instantaneous updates. I had learned to program in (IBM) Assembler, Cobol, SAS, Pascal and LINC over this period.
By 1994 I was working in Voice Recognition technology, and divided my time between providing technical support for our Marketing team and our Clients who were using the desktop voice recognition software we dealt in (DragonDictate and later Dragon NaturallySpeaking); teaching some of our Clients how to set up and use the software when our regular trainers were super busy; and working on a Voice Dialling solution for Telecom NZ. Keep in mind that this was in the time way before Smart Phones - 1995 and 1996. The solution I installed at their Central Exchange in Wellington gave anyone who subscribed to the service the ability to program names into the system, and associate phone numbers to those spoken names. So when a subscriber keyed *25 on their phone, the network would direct the call to the server I had installed, and immediately respond "Please either say the name, or speak the number you would like to call". During the later phases of the installation, Telecom's Marketing Department carried out an internal trial of the system, and it won an award for "Being the system most like a man" - it didn't understand the word "NO".
All joking aside, it ended up being a brilliant system, and was used throughout the country long before Smart phones came to the market with their own built-in voice recognition. Telecom's first advert for this service was priceless See the advert here (opens in a new tab)
In 1996 a School approached me to see if Voice Recognition could help their Dyslexic students work more independently. The school had identified three boys in the class due to sit external exams later that year, who all struggled with Dyslexia.
Over a three month period these three students were given support and training to become fully proficient with a voice recognition system (Dragon Dictate in those days). They were aged 15-16, and were provided with a Laptop PC with a view to them being able to study independently if possible and avoid the need for reader/writers for school and national examinations. The idea was to give them a tool or a strategy that would help them to work around the problems associated with their Dyslexia, not actually fix anything.
The results surprised everyone. I had been used to working with Office-workers, Doctors and Lawyers - people who could read and write perfectly well, but for whatever reason wanted to use voice recognition technology to make their work faster and easier. Many of the Office-workers had RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury, also known as OOS - Occupational Overuse Syndrome) so had great difficulty using the keyboard and mouse, so were given this technology by their employers so that they could continue to work. The Doctors and Lawyers were more fascinated by the technology, and wanted it to speed up their work. Whatever they could speak would instantly be transcribed by the software straight into MS Word. At that time, the software was capable of discrete speech recognition: you could dictate straight into MS Word at a speed of around 60 to 80 words per minute:
But - you - had - to - talk - like - robot - comma - leaving - a - gap - between - your - words.
It was also capable of learning: any corrections you made while you were dictating, it would remember for the next time you said that particular "sound" or word.
A key part of learning how to use the software was tied up in learning how to correct the recognition mistakes the software made so that it would remember your preferences - it could learn the way that you speak; and learn the differnce between mistakes you made in your speech and the genuine recognition mistakes. If you corrected a word to something you didn't say but you meant to say, it would remeber that and repeat the mistaken recognition quite happily next time. You would then have to go into the correction routine and spend a lot of effort fixing the problem you had just created. So it was vitally important for someone with Dyslexia that they get this right from square one. The technology improved incredibly over the next couple of years, to the point where it became capable of continuous speech recognition - transcribing your speech as quickly as you could talk. And at the same time recognition accuracy has gone from about 70%, to now 99% or better, unless you're from Aberdeen (see the Youtube Video of the two Scottish guys in a lift trying to get it to go to "11").
As soon as I started working with these lads, it became really obvious that we had a problem: they couldn't tell when the software made a recognition error, or when they had made a mistake with saying the wrong word. So I quickly realised that I needed to change the way I taught them. Whereas I had needed maybe 5 hour-long sessions with someone to show them how to set up their voice file so that it would give them the best recognition possible, and teach them all the intricacies of the software, with these lads I had to slow things right down. We ended up spending about 30 hours one to one over the next three months. By the end, I felt that they were doing their work just as well as any one of the non-Dyslexic people I had ever worked with.
At the end of those three months, I got called in to a meeting at the school to discuss the results and to do a debrief with the teaching staff. When I got into the meeting, the Head Teacher and the staff from the English department were all present, waiting. After the introductions, the Head Teacher stood up, hands on hips, and basically said:
"What the hell have you been doing with these boys?"
After a moment's pause, I put my hands up, and replied:
,strong>"Nothing. What are you asking?"
His response was:
"These boys don't have Dyslexia anymore! So what have you done?"
You could have heard a pin drop in the room, and my jaw hit the floor. When I managed to wind my jaw back up, I asked him:
"What do you mean, they don't have Dyslexia any more?
He went on to say that the reason they got me in to work with the lads was that they could not read to save their lives, and they could not write - their handwriting was messy to the point of being unintelligible. Their teachers couldn't even determine if the boys could spell, because what they wrote couldn't be read (picture a Doctor's handwriting/scrawl).
"Now, though, they were reading everything they were given, and looking for more. They had even been "caught" in the Library - something they had never done before."
"So," he said again, "What have you done?"
Scratching my head somewhat, I felt obliged to ask if the school had done anything differently: had they provided the boys any additional tuition or training alongside the work I had done. Their answer was:
"NO, nothing else changed. Just this. So what happened?"
I couldn't answer him, and I said so. But I did say that I would find out.
My curiosity started a journey that spans from 1996 to now, and is still going. I've worked several thousand Dyslexics, ALL of whom have now overcome their reading and writing issues as a result of this process. The time it takes to work with people to get them to that point has gone from 30 hours one to one, to now 7-10 hours for each person. The sessions are still spaced over 3 months, but the time taken with each person has reduced significantly due to the experience gained in learning what actually makes this program work, combined with the huge advances in the technology.
I had also been hunting for EEG technology that I could use to see what differences there were between Dyslexic and Non-Dyslexic thought processes, and also find out if there were any obvious changes in brain behaviour after going through my training. I ended up helping to Crowd-fund the development of a portable EEG Headset in 2013. As soon as I started using it with my Clients I knew there was something truly incredible happening to the neural behaviour for Dyslexics as they were going through the work as I taught them to do. There is a lot more information about the EEG evidence of these behaviours on the Research page. The study of the effects would be well suited to Masters and/or PhD research perhaps.
My experience in this field since 1996 has shown that the minimum age at which we can work with anyone using these techniques is 10 (ten) years of age. I have found that children younger than this do not have the necessary skills nor mental and emotional tools to do the work required here. There are still things you as a parent or teacher can do for children this age to minimise the impact on them of the difficulties they experience. There is no upper age limit, and it is never too late to start learning to read. See the Case Studies for some examples.
An individual training plan tailored not only to your individual learning style, also to any other factors that affect your ability to concentrate, the time you are able to commit to working on this, how quickly you want results, and the commitment you are prepared to make.
It's quite simple - check out our Screening Test, email us to make telephone appointment to discuss how this can be made to work for you, your family member, your colloeague, or your friend. You can also check out how our Screening Test works by clicking on the Blue "Diagnosis" button below.
Feel free to reach out to us with any questions or inquiries.
