Transforming Text Into Student Success: A Guide to Creating Dyslexic-Friendly Classroom Materials

Up to 20% of people in the US have some form of reading disability according to The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in 2000 (Wadlington & Wadlington, 2005, p. 16). The UK has the figure at around 10% just for dyslexia sufferers (Crown, 2022). In Japan, a government survey estimated around 6.3% of elementary school children had some dyslexic type learning disorder; however, this was based on teacher responses as there is still a stigma in Japan over reporting these types of disabilities (NPO EDGE, n.d.). Although there are no accurate global figures on reading disabilities, as some nations do not test for this, it is very likely that the percentages of the global population having some form of dyslexia are broadly similar in size to the ones cited above due to the causative factors being genetic/medical in nature and not educational or geographic. A full explanation of the medical science behind what causes dyslexia is outside the scope of this paper. However, for those interested, there is research explaining this for non-medical people (Lyon, 1998; Peterson & Pennington, 2012). Also important for teachers to consider, regarding visual accessibility, is colour usage choice for people with colour vision deficiency (CVD). However, the CVD in education issue has already been covered in an earlier paper (Paterson, 2024), so it does not need to be covered here. That paper is a good complement to this paper, so please have a read if interested in CVD issues in making education more accessible. What this paper will focus on instead is how teachers can minimise the effects of dyslexia on students’ performance, especially in the area of interacting with texts in their courses, as helping those students who suffer from dyslexia is a worthwhile cause. A high-quality and equitable education should be accessible and available to all learners as far as possible, and making more dyslexic-friendly materials for classrooms to help students in this regard is actually very possible and something that educators should strive towards providing in their classes.