Lesson in Dyslexia

I've always known the importance of providing adjustments during training to accomodate people with dyslexia, but i never did anything about it until yesterday when i attended a course on Dyslexia Awareness. There were two reasons i attended the course. Firstly my manager wanted me to know about the subject in case i needed to support an apprentice i am currently managing in case the apprentice did have dyslexia (my manager suspected this). Secondly each member of the learning and development has to quality check at least two of the training courses we deliver.

Suffice to say I found the course very interesting and from a learning and development perspective I came away with the following learning points.

1. In preparing for classroom training print handouts on coloured paper since people with dyslexia struggle to read black font on white back grounds.
2. If you can't print on coloured paper make available transparent coloured covered sheets which people with dyslexia can overlay on documents they want to read during the training.
3. Break material down into groups of three to prevent information overload. For example, three objectives, three learning points, three bullet points.
4. Prepare slides with lighter coloured backgrounds.
5. Colours that have been recommended for backgrounds are light blue and light yellow although there is another argument that a rainbow of colours is recommended since sensitivity to colours may differ between individuals with dyslexia.