What Is Dyslexia?

When someone suspects their child or student may have dyslexia, one of the first things they do is search, “What is dyslexia?” And while they’ll find plenty of important information, it can quickly become overwhelming and difficult to parse out.

I’ve spent more than 20 years in education, much of that time working with struggling readers and students with dyslexia. So let’s start with three important things I’ve learned about dyslexia, the people who experience it, and how we can best support them.

1. Dyslexia does not mean someone isn’t intelligent or isn’t trying

At its core, dyslexia is a specific learning disability characterized by difficulties with word reading and/or spelling that can affect accuracy, speed, or both. The exact difficulties can look different from person to person and may include difficulty decoding unfamiliar words, recognizing words automatically, spelling, or reading accurately and fluently.

And yes, dyslexia is considered a disability. The current definition from the International Dyslexia Association describes it as a specific learning disability. That doesn’t say anything about a person’s intelligence or potential. It recognizes that dyslexia can create very real barriers to reading, writing, education, and everyday life.

One of the most important things I want parents and teachers to understand is that difficulty learning to read tells us very little about how intelligent a child is. I’ll never forget walking a new kindergartener down to screening. She was incredibly bright, had a sophisticated vocabulary, explained complicated ideas easily, and had an incredible amount of knowledge. I remember thinking, “She is going to ace this screener.” And as soon as we sat down, it became clear that she couldn’t name most letters. It was so unexpected.

Dyslexia occurs across all levels of intelligence. In fact, sometimes a child’s strengths can make their reading difficulties easier to miss. Strong vocabulary, oral language, background knowledge, and reasoning skills can help a child compensate, sometimes quite successfully, for difficulties with reading. That’s why we have to be careful not to assume that a bright child who is struggling to read just needs more time, more practice, or more effort. What they may actually need is for us to look more closely at why reading is so difficult for them.

For those of us who learned to read relatively easily, I think it’s easy to forget just how complicated reading actually is. Skilled readers can look at most words and recognize them almost instantly. We don’t consciously think about the individual sounds or letters. For a struggling reader, that same process can require tremendous effort. Imagine having to work that hard sentence after sentence, page after page, and then being told that you aren’t trying hard enough.

And while we’re clearing up misconceptions, dyslexia does not mean that someone “sees letters backwards.” Letter reversals can happen, particularly when children are learning to read and write, but they occur in children with and without dyslexia. In fact, letter reversals are a common part of early literacy development and typically decrease as children gain reading and writing experience, often disappearing by around the end of second grade. They are not what defines dyslexia.

Dyslexia also doesn’t come with a particular personality, level of intelligence, or magical set of strengths. I’ve certainly worked with dyslexic students who were extraordinarily creative, funny, analytical, artistic, mechanically inclined, or gifted in other areas. Those strengths belong to those individuals, not to dyslexia itself.

In fact, sometimes a child’s strengths are exactly what allow their reading difficulty to hide for so long. A student with strong language, background knowledge, or reasoning skills may become remarkably good at compensating for what they cannot easily read. They may memorize words, use context, listen closely, or find other ways to keep up. Eventually, however, the demands of reading become greater and those strategies may no longer be enough.

That’s why one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is also one of the simplest: struggling to read is not evidence that a child isn’t capable of learning. Sometimes it’s evidence that we haven’t yet figured out how that child needs to be taught.

2. Dyslexia can look very different from one person to another

Just like most things involving human beings, dyslexia does not look exactly the same in everyone. Two people can both have dyslexia and have very different strengths, challenges, and support needs.

We’re used to hearing the word “spectrum” when talking about autism, and while we don’t typically use that term for dyslexia, dyslexia also exists along a continuum. For one person, sounding out unfamiliar words may be incredibly difficult. Another person may become fairly accurate at decoding but continue to read slowly and with significant effort. Someone else may become a reasonably fluent reader while spelling remains an enormous challenge. Difficulties with phonological processing are common among people with dyslexia, but they are not universal. Even among people who share a dyslexia diagnosis, the specific difficulties they experience and their severity can look remarkably different.

Age and experience can change what dyslexia looks like, too. As children get older, some become remarkably good at compensating for their difficulties. They may rely on their vocabulary, language skills, background knowledge, memory, or context to figure out what they are reading. As a result, dyslexia isn’t always obvious, particularly when we look only at whether a student can ultimately get the “right” answer rather than how much effort it took to get there.

And while a child’s ability to compensate can speak to their ingenuity, grit, and determination, some of those workarounds can also mask weaknesses in foundational reading skills. That can make it harder to recognize when a child needs targeted instruction, which is one of the many reasons early identification and intervention are so important.

We also have to remember that dyslexia doesn’t always occur by itself. It can co-occur with conditions such as ADHD, developmental language disorder, dyscalculia, and other learning differences. Those additional strengths and challenges can significantly affect what reading and learning look like for an individual. A student struggling primarily with word reading may need something very different from a student who is struggling with both word reading and oral language.

This is one reason why identifying dyslexia should never be the end of the conversation. The label can help us understand an important part of why someone is struggling, but it doesn’t tell us everything we need to know about that reader. We still need to understand where the breakdown is occurring. Is it phonemic awareness? Decoding? Automatic word recognition? Spelling? Fluency? Language comprehension? More than one of these?

After years of working with students with dyslexia, I’ve learned that the most useful question usually isn’t simply, “Does this student have dyslexia?” It’s, “What does this particular reader need?” And then tailoring instruction to exactly that.

3. The goal isn’t to teach a program. It’s to teach a reader.

Reading intervention has changed considerably during my career. We know much more today about how children learn to read and what happens when that process doesn’t develop as expected. The science of reading isn’t a program or curriculum. It’s a large body of research from multiple disciplines that helps us understand how reading develops and what kinds of instruction are most likely to help students become successful readers. And as new evidence emerges, our understanding of the science of reading should evolve along with it.

For students with dyslexia and other reading difficulties, that generally means instruction that is explicit, systematic, cumulative, and responsive to the learner. Depending on the student’s needs, intervention may address phonemic awareness, phonics and decoding, spelling, morphology, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Structured Literacy brings many of these principles together and provides a useful framework for thinking about effective instruction.

Orton-Gillingham has played an enormous role in my own professional life. I trained as an Orton-Gillingham teacher and later as a trainer, and much of what I learned continues to influence the way I teach. But one of the things I’ve learned over the years is that no program or approach is magic. Even the program that has the best marketing campaign this year.

A program can give us a scope and sequence, instructional routines, materials, and a framework for making decisions. What it can’t do is replace a knowledgeable teacher who understands the reader sitting in front of them. If a student isn’t progressing, our response can’t simply be to keep turning the pages and assume they’ll eventually catch up. We need to look at the data, figure out where the breakdown is happening, and adjust the instruction accordingly. Assessment shouldn’t just tell us whether a student is struggling. It should help us decide what to do next.

This is also why early identification and intervention matter so much. We don’t need to wait until a child has spent years struggling before providing additional support. Screening, monitoring progress, and responding when a child isn’t developing foundational reading skills as expected can allow us to intervene much earlier. But early intervention should never be confused with a deadline. There isn’t an age when the door suddenly closes. Older children, teenagers, and adults can continue developing their reading skills, and appropriate intervention can still make a meaningful difference.

At the same time, intervention and access are not opposing ideas. A student shouldn’t have to wait until their reading improves before they’re allowed access to the same knowledge and opportunities as everyone else. Audiobooks, text-to-speech, extended time, speech-to-text, and other appropriate accommodations can give someone access while they continue developing their reading and writing skills. Providing an accommodation isn’t giving up on intervention, and providing intervention isn’t a reason to withhold an accommodation.

Evidence matters here, too. Dyslexia has attracted plenty of interventions, products, and treatments that make compelling promises. Something can sound scientific, innovative, or intuitive without having good evidence that it actually improves reading. Families deserve to know the difference between an intervention supported by reading research and one supported primarily by testimonials and marketing.

After more than 20 years in education, I’m much less interested in whether a student has completed a particular program or can check off every skill on a scope and sequence. I care about what reading is actually like for that person. Can they approach an unfamiliar word with strategies that work? Are they becoming more accurate and fluent? Can they understand what they read? Can they access information when reading itself creates a barrier? Are they becoming more independent? And do they understand that needing help learning to read was never evidence that they weren’t capable of learning?

Those are the outcomes that matter to me.