Studying with dyslexia can be tricky sometimes - but in this day and age, it's great to find that technology's got our back.
There’s an app for everything these days. You can order a pizza, check the half-time scores, and buy a wedding dress all from the cosy comfort of your very own sofa. At the same time, you can upload a flawless photo straight from your phone to the net (hopefully not of you eating pizza and playing football in your wedding dress).
But for a lot of people, apps aren’t just a way to stay connected and order online. They’re an important part of making learning more accessible too. Studying with dyslexia can be a stressful time- people who struggle with reading can feel daunted by the learning experience, but there are a number of great ways that app-based technology can help. That’s why we’ve put together a list of some of the handiest apps we’ve found that can make the world of education a little more accessible.
Sometimes, people with dyslexia, or other conditions like ADHD, can struggle with time management and keeping on top of what they’ve got planned. Brain in Hand is a time management app that lets you schedule tasks, to-do’s and events in a diary. It also offers reminders for the tasks you’ve got set and the deadlines you’ve got coming up, to help you stay on the ball.
Favourite of copywriters and bloggers everywhere, Hemingway offers users the opportunity to paste a section of text into a window and receive feedback on its overall readability. It highlights areas that need work in an assortment of pastel shades, and gives a handy numerical breakdown of adverb density, sentence complexity and passive voice, as well as suggesting areas for simplification.
Medincle is a gift for anybody with dyslexia who’s studying in the healthcare field. It’s a medical spellchecker that can quickly work with your own word processing software to enable accurate biomedical spellchecking. It also gets rid of the dreaded red lines that appear under the names of medical terms that your computer doesn’t recognise, so that you can focus on your text.
OpenWeb is a tool that has accessibility at the centre of its design. It’s an app that helps customise your browser experience, and gives you the ability to adjust your font size and font colour to make the act of reading a little easier. It also converts pages to OpenDyslexic, a sans-serif font developed for people with dyslexia that some find much easier to read than traditional choices like Arial or Times New Roman.
A handy software pairing to make note-taking easy. Sonocent Audio NoteTaker is a combination desktop software and companion app package that lets you capture text, audio and slides on the go in a single note-taking workspace. You can also use it to convert notes into a variety of formats, as well as clean up noisy audio.
EquatIO is a support app for anybody studying disciplines like maths, science, or engineering where there’s a heavy reliance on equations. The software recognises what you’re writing, or typing, and converts it into a clear and easy-to-read on-screen formula that can make notetaking and calculations much easier.
MindMeister is great for people who like to learn visually or struggle with reading. The app is designed around the idea of mind-mapping, and allows users to create interactive maps and flow diagrams that are ideal for notetaking on the go. It’s also great for when you come to revise topics and need a visual aid. In the era of remote working, it’s been adopted by many businesses and educational institutions due to its collaborative capabilities — users can comment on topics, vote on ideas, and discuss them in the integrated chat.
Sometimes, technology can be a little invasive. We’re spending more time on our devices than ever before, and it’s difficult to disengage when Covid-19 has forced at least a degree of our social and professional lives online. But it’s comforting to know there are ways that technology can make people with dyslexia’s learning experience better, when it comes to studying and revision.
All apps listed are available for Android and iOS.