Great Debate: What Is the Role of AT for Students With Dyslexia?

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Volume 8, Issue 1
March 2019

 

Several months ago, John Alexander (executive director of Groves Academy) and Lou Salza (retired head of Lawrence School) engaged in a respectful but lively debate about the role of assistive technology (AT) for students with dyslexia. Their debate, which took place on SPELLTalk’s LISTSERV went beyond the usual arguments and assumptions and explored various considerations from novel perspectives. We found their discussion so enlightening, we asked them to reprise it for our Examiner readers. They both generously agreed to do so! We encourage you to share this important article, which goes beyond a binary pro-con debate. We thank Lou and John for their thoughtful exchange and SPELLTalk for providing a forum that yields such insightful discussion.

 

LOU SALZA:
Time to Eliminate Print, Go Directly to Oral Discourse?

For the first time in human history, technology allows easy access to the thoughts, words, and writings of just about anyone past or present. Optical character recognition (OCR) and speech recognition technologies are ubiquitous—available on the web, tablets, and phones. They are inexpensive, mobile, robust, and extraordinarily nimble. OCR can be used with e-books and integrated with professional narration—often authors reading their own work.
 
IDA has labored long and hard to help print-disabled children to read, but I have come to the conclusion that it may be time to eliminate print and go directly to oral discourse. The technology described above leapfrogs over tedious decoding and encoding regimens, curriculum, and even policy debates! Might we eliminate the mediations and hearings, evaluations and Response to Intervention (RTI) discussions simply by making this technology available and teaching and supporting its use for any child in any class?
 
For those of us with dyslexia, OCR plugs directly into our language comprehension capacities, provides a prosthetic phonological processor that bypasses inefficient decoding skills, and liberates attention, energy, and the mind for higher-order thinking and reflection. It allows children struggling with “eye-reading” fluency to access texts at levels commensurate with their interests and thinking ability, freeing them from the tedium of wrestling with an alphabet and an orthography known as much for its potholes and speed bumps as it is for its lexical richness.  
 
English orthography records and transmits oral language
 
All students—those with dyslexia and others—are unnecessarily delayed and punished by misguided educators who restrict the use of text-to-speech or speech-to-text tools. To those who refer to OCR as “cutting corners” or “cheating,” let’s remind ourselves that Shakespeare wrote his plays for audiences who saw and heard actors performing what he wrote, not for individuals “eye reading” silently, possibly struggling with the decoding of his deftly chosen words. 

English orthography exists to record and transmit oral language. The fact that our orthography reflects the use and incorporation of many terms from other languages makes English a lexically rich and simultaneously phonologically challenging treasure trove of information encoded into 26 letters that must work double and triple time to do the bidding of the speakers of the English language worldwide. (See note below.)
 
Dr. Samuel Johnson compiled one of the first dictionaries of the English language with the hope that he could standardize English spelling at a time in the 18th century when people spelled phonetically. They used the orthographic system creatively and phonetically. In that early dictionary, Dr. Johnson defined lexicographer as “a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.” I respectfully suggest that his attempt at standardizing English spelling was a wild-goose chase—impossible at the outset and far from harmless!
 
When I was a boy in first grade, the alphabet that marched around the top of the classroom chalkboards shifted and changed each day, especially in the middle. I was never able to reliably identify each character’s name or predict either its place in line or the various roles and voices it would have in words. By fourth grade, we were told to look up words in a thick, heavy book crammed with words I could not read or spell. Using the dictionary required the facile use of the alphabet as a way to code, sequence, and organize—adding insult to injury.
 
Due to excellent and vigilant teachers, I learned to read in junior high, was accepted to college, and barely escaped the University of Massachusetts with an English literature degree in five-and-a-half years—despite a slow reading rate—with lots of help from my long-suffering wife and love of my life, Dell. Despite my difficulties reading, I loved books and identified as an avid—though slow—reader. Literature offered me exposure to experiences I could not otherwise know and enriched every aspect of my life. It still does. But I lost years of exposure to books as a child due to the barrier created by print. Hearing Dell read Winnie the Pooh to my 10-year-old younger brother (when Dell and I were in our twenties) was revelatory. 
 
A richness and power “eye reading” could never convey
 
Recently I saw a documentary on PBS about Maya Angelou. It prompted me to download her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I also listened to the narration using my Kindle’s Whispersync feature. 
 
Listening to (ear reading) Maya Angelou’s book, hearing her voice speaking her truth as I commuted in my car or as I followed along in the e-book (immersion reading), demonstrated the values of inflection, diction, and prosody—all those pragmatic and extra-linguistic features of spoken language that are so difficult to encode using English orthography and the mechanics of writing.

Her narration had a richness and power that silent “eye reading” could never convey. I felt like she was speaking to me because she was indeed speaking to me!
 
I believe it is time for all of us to acknowledge and embrace our own relationship to performance-enhancing technology. Or to put it another way, “How dependent are you on ‘assistive technology’?” To that end, please think about and answer the following questions:

1. List the devices, apps, and tech services on which you rely.
2. What apps, devices, or services do you use for special tasks (perhaps less than 5X/week) that increase the quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of required tasks? (PowerPoint? Word? Google Docs? Google Classroom? Conference calling? Claro ScanPen? Zoom? Siri?)
3. How is your/our “dependence” on these services and devices similar to or different from a student using text-to-speech or speech-to-text to increase reading and writing speed, effectiveness, and efficiency?
4. Why does acceptance of and respect for technology and service devices align more with our social perceptions than with their objective usefulness?

Note. “The English language contains 24 to 27 (depending on dialect) separate consonant phonemes and between fourteen to twenty vowels and diphthongs. However, English only uses the twenty-six letters of the Latin alphabet. For this reason, a one to one correspondence between character and sound is not possible to denote all the complex sounds. This means that the letters have to multi-task!” My English Language. (n.d.). English orthography. Retrieved February 11, 2019, from http://www.myenglishlanguage.com/linguistics-language-guide/english-orthography/

 

JOHN ALEXANDER
Teach Reading Skills First

Learning to read is the most important academic skill a child must learn between kindergarten and third grade. These are the years when students learn to read. During fourth grade, schools transition the general education classroom from learning to read to reading to learn. If students cannot make this important transition due to an inability to read, suddenly school becomes much more difficult. Now they must acquire much of their knowledge and learning through written language. If a student cannot process written language, he or she will fall further and further behind in the acquisition of content. Inevitably, frustration will increase. 
 
Is fourth grade the time to switch exclusively to assistive technology? I think not.
 
In the 30 plus years that I have taught students with dyslexia to read and have helped teachers to teach students to “eye read,” I have yet to meet a student who did not want to learn to read via their eyes.

The younger the student, the more excited and motivated he or she usually is to learn to read. Generally, when highly trained teachers use evidence-based practices, even first, second, or third graders with dyslexia can become functional, if not fluent, readers.
 
The vast majority of reading difficulties can be ameliorated
 
The teaching of reading to students with dyslexia becomes increasingly complicated the older they become. Many factors come into play for these older students. Is their dyslexia, which needs to be viewed on a continuum of need, mild or severe? Has their instruction been so inadequate that it has exacerbated their reading difficulties? (From personal experience working in public and charter schools, I can attest that this, unfortunately, does happen.) How much has the motivation of the struggling reader been affected either by his or her reading disability or by inadequate instruction? All of these factors play into the reading ability of the student with dyslexia, but for the vast majority, these factors can be ameliorated to the point where these students can become functional, if not fluent, readers. 
 
Do we stop teaching these students to read and instead fully transition them to assistive technology? I think not.
 
Relying on assistive technology for the struggling reader is restrictive
 
There is no question that for students with dyslexia struggling with varying levels of reading difficulties and the resulting frustrations, assistive technology is an easier means for acquiring and producing information. But does this mean that it is the best way to have students with dyslexia read and write? Let me present two arguments as to why this is not the case.
 
First, it is a myth that students with dyslexia will never read well. This myth would have us accommodate these students with assistive technology that enables them to “ear read.” However, according to Dr. G. Reid Lyon—a leading reading researcher and proponent of good reading instruction, who many Examiner readers know well—we can reduce illiteracy rates in real classrooms with kids at risk where 98% of them are on free and reduced lunches and 80% are a minority. The 70% reading-failure rate of first graders can be reduced to 2–6% when we do it right. Simply put, we can teach the vast majority of struggling readers, whether dyslexic or instructional casualties, to become functional readers.
 
The second argument for the teaching of eye reading pertains to the availability of assistive technology for those who need it most. While it is true that never before has such powerful technology been so accessible, is it always at the ready for the struggling reader? 
 
Admittedly, I am a technology Luddite who has owned a cell phone for less than a year. I also have ADHD, as do 40% of those with dyslexia. Those of us who are diagnosed with ADHD suffer from executive function difficulties and organizational challenges. At this moment, I cannot tell you where my cell phone is; I have not seen it for more than a week. More than likely, the battery charge is very low wherever that device might be. If I were a struggling reader who had to rely on my assistive technology device to read, I would be in a “world of hurt.” Missing devices and low battery charges have also been true for too many of my students with dyslexia. Lacking the ability to read without a device, these students would be thrown back to the Stone Age.
 
In short, assistive technology can, and should, play an important role in the life of those with dyslexia, but it never, ever should replace a person’s ability to read with his or her eyes. It is important to provide every student with dyslexia with every tool that might be advantageous to his or her well-being. This includes teaching students to read and write without the use of assistive technology. Relying on assistive technology as the only or primary tool for struggling readers is restrictive, stunts their potential, and leads to feelings of shame because they cannot read traditionally like their peers.

 

LOU SALZA
Response

Thank you, John. If only all school children in America could attend a school that you lead and where your teachers are in charge of instruction!
 
You point out so many things with which I agree wholeheartedly. Children in kindergarten to third grade should indeed be provided a highly trained and skilled teacher of reading who understands the science of reading and the importance of appropriate instruction. Children are indeed hurt when teachers use a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching reading or any subject for that matter. Learning to read in primary school is indeed the most important thing that children are required or expected to do. However, when they can’t do it like their peers, they feel deficient and inadequate and begin developing a deprecating self-narrative that extends way beyond reading. 

We well-meaning educators aid and abet this self-destructive narrative by convincing struggling readers that they have a “learning disability,” when all they have is a print challenge. Deborah Waber in her book, Rethinking Learning Disabilities, talks about the “cascade” of negative impacts that follow early struggle and failure in reading. Failure to read leaks over into social and emotional areas that can impede children’s overall development and cause serious—even permanent—damage to children’s sense of agency.
 
While I also agree that most students with dyslexia can indeed become what we call “functional” readers, it is important to remember that reading defined by a score on a discrete test does not adequately address the question of whether a child might be able to navigate middle and secondary school curricula as reading tasks become more challenging, longer, and more complex. For example, a student with dyslexia who learns to read “functionally” may not be able to tolerate the fatigue that sets in after struggling to read with a deficient neural phonological processor.
 
And what about the older student who is able to struggle through middle and high school but gets to college and finds the reading load simply too much?
 
Eye reading and ear reading are not exclusive
 
I would suggest that instead of thinking about eye reading or ear reading in exclusive terms, we should think about these as choices that children, young adults, and older adults have and can make depending on the kind of reading they would like to do or they are expected to do. 

Even a child in third or fourth grade who is still being tutored in Orton-Gillingham (O-G) approaches might appreciate the opportunity to listen to a book read aloud or to see and hear a book at the same time. Simultaneous eye and ear reading is a powerful multisensory experience. When children are provided with a professional narration for a text they can follow along with, they are offered the opportunity to see how inflection, tone, volume, and prosody can increase and enhance comprehension and the total reading experience. The same goes for adults who are fluent readers and would like to read a book without having to stop driving their cars, or some other task with their hands that would preclude holding a book.
 
We have known for decades that schools tend to define success far too narrowly for children. We do our society no favors by restricting students’ access to performance-enhancing methodologies or devices. For too long, schooling has been characterized by arbitrary rules and restrictions such as time limits. Children and families confront a bureaucratic monolith in too many schools. The message that those children and families get goes something like this: Do what we tell you, when we tell you, how we tell you, or we will hurt you.
 
The bottom line in this conversation, however, is that technology is now ubiquitous. It is inexpensive, it is mobile, and it is powerful. I believe there is no way we can prevent students from discovering its power to transform restrictive stumbling blocks into accessible stepping-stones to success.
 
We must establish practices at all levels to make schools more user friendly and more effective for all learners, regardless of the tools available—with emphasis on these principles:

• Competence over compliance 
• Understanding over memorization
• Authentic learning over grades 
• Engagement over passivity 
• Equity over equality
• Restorative over retributive disciplinary practices
• Self-agency over self-esteem.

 

JOHN ALEXANDER
Response

I read with great interest Lou’s thoughts about the role of technology in the world of literacy. Lou is an extremely intelligent and articulate person. Over many years, he has helped thousands of students with dyslexia. He carries great gravitas in a discussion involving literacy because he walks in the shoes of the person with dyslexia.
 
Lou and I stand in strong agreement that all those with dyslexia should have access to the technologies that make their lives easier. I believe we also agree that fair does not necessarily mean equal. A student who requires technology due to neurological issues with print must have access to technology, and teachers or professors who believe that this technology gives the student with dyslexia an unfair advantage in the classroom obviously do not understand what it means to be print-challenged. Depriving a print-challenged student of technology is akin to depriving a visually impaired person of glasses and telling that person to just look harder instead.
 
All students should be given the opportunity to learn to read
 
I think where we differ in the role of technology is whether we should bypass learning to read in favor of technology that can read for us. I strongly believe that all students should be given the opportunity to learn to read, even if learning to read is very difficult. To not be given this opportunity deprives a child of an invaluable skill and, arguably, an invaluable experience.
 
Dyslexia is on a continuum. Some people with dyslexia are very mildly impacted and can become fluent eye readers relatively easily with evidence-based reading and spelling instruction. For others, learning to read will be one of the most difficult tasks they encounter in life, and technology should be available to them to level the playing field. However, given the correct instruction, most students with dyslexia can clear the hurdle of their reading disability and feel a great sense of accomplishment in doing so.

This sense of accomplishment would never be experienced if they were not provided the opportunity to learn to read. 
 
Let me offer an example. Six years ago, Maia entered Groves Academy as a tenth grader. Groves is an independent school for students diagnosed with a specific learning disability. Like most Groves students, Maia was diagnosed with dyslexia. She read at a third-grade level. I recommended to Maia and her parents that we not “waste time” trying to teach Maia to read. As we do with all our students, we would provide Maia with the technology that would read for her. Maia was excited to use this technology, but in no uncertain terms, she told me that she wanted to learn to read. Maia came in early every morning to work with a master literacy instructor. At the end of her tenth-grade year, she was eye reading at an eighth-grade level and was reading chapter books for the first time! By the end of her eleventh-grade year, she was reading at grade level. Now in her second year at a Wisconsin university, Maia is studying to become a nurse. Maia does use assistive technology, but she also has textbooks for every class and uses them diligently.
 
Maia’s progress in learning to read may be an exception, but what is not an exception is the gratitude that all our students have for being taught to eye read.  Should we deprive a student of this opportunity just because learning to read is difficult? Should we take away that sense of accomplishment from students who learn to read because adults feel that technology is better for them? (I am probably in the minority of folks who believe that technology is not necessarily better for students.)
 
How do we decide which child should not be taught to read?
 
Let’s take Lou’s argument for using technology to help students with dyslexia gather information from print that they would otherwise acquire by eye reading one step further. Wouldn’t technology help all students—with or without dyslexia—acquire information from print more efficiently? Consider that students in kindergarten through third grade literally spend hundreds of hours learning to read and spell. Instead, these students could learn to use technology to read for them in a fraction of the time. How could learning be redirected in those hundreds of hours? Could we spend more time with math or writing instruction? Furthermore, think of the stress reduction of teachers who are charged with teaching reading. How easy! How convenient! Turn on the computer or iPhone, and you will never have to teach reading again.
 
Seriously though, how do we decide which child should not be taught to read in favor of providing technology to do it for him or her? How dyslexic must a person be? Who would feel comfortable telling dyslexic Mary that she doesn’t have to learn to read, but, Billy, your dyslexia isn’t severe enough to warrant using only technology, so you are going to have to learn to read. The burden of deciding which child should learn to read and which child should use only technology is too great—and not fair—to put upon a teacher. More importantly, it is not fair to students.
 
I disagree with Lou’s contention that optical character recognition (OCR) allows those with dyslexia to tap into their language comprehension abilities. While OCR may help some, others with dyslexia also have auditory processing issues and become overloaded when too much information is presented through the spoken word. This subset of students with dyslexia benefits from learning to read and having information presented both visually—through print—and auditorily. Orton-Gillingham instruction stresses multimodality learning. Taking away print is taking away a modality. We should be providing students with dyslexia with options; we should not be taking them away.
 
Does anyone believe that print is going away or that there will never be a time when we are not forced to eye read? If we do not provide a child with the opportunity to learn to read, we are depriving him or her of a fundamental skill that he or she will need at some point in life. If we didn’t teach students to read, I would not have received a picture from a mom of a 12-year-old with dyslexia who is reading a real book on a real couch in front of a real fire. I don’t want to miss Maia’s story of reading success or the picture of a child with dyslexia reading a real book on a couch. 
 
Is technology essential for those with dyslexia? Yes! Yes! A thousand times, yes! But should a student with dyslexia be shackled to his or her laptop or iPhone in order to read—without another choice? No! No! A thousand times, no!

 

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Lou Salza retired as the head of school at Lawrence School in Northeast Ohio on July 1, 2018. Lawrence School serves students with learning and attention differences in grades K–12 from its two campus locations in Broadview Heights (grades K–6) and Sagamore Hills (grades 7–12). Prior to joining Lawrence School in July of 2007, Lou served for 11 years as Head of School for Assets School for gifted, dyslexic, and gifted-dyslexic students in Honolulu. For eight years prior to that, Lou was the assistant principal of the Hamilton Wenham Regional High School in Wenham, Massachusetts. He also served in various positions over 13 years at Landmark School in Beverly, Massachusetts.

Lou has served as a trustee for the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) in Washington, D.C., the Ohio Association of Independent Schools in Columbus, OH, and the Cleveland Council of Independent Schools. He also served as president of the Hawaii Association of Independent Schools (2002–2007) and is past president of the Learning Disabilities Network in Hingham, Massachusetts (1990–1996). Lou also served on the boards of the Harvard Principals’ Center Advisory Board (2007–2011) and the Glen Urquhart School (1983–1986), and was educational consultant to the School Function Program at Boston’s Children’s Hospital in the Department of Ambulatory Pediatrics (1981–1983). Lou holds a bachelor’s degree in English and urban education from the University of Massachusetts and a master’s degree in reading and language from Harvard University Graduate School of Education. Contact Lou Salza: (c) 440-653-6850 or lou.salza@gmail.com.

John Alexander is the executive director of Groves Academy, a nonprofit educational organization consisting of a school, a community outreach center, and a professional learning institute located in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. 

Groves Academy serves students in grades 1–12 who have dyslexia or related language-based learning disabilities, attention deficit disorders, or similar learning differences. In 2015, Groves opened The Learning Center at Groves Academy, which serves families in the community with children who have learning differences by offering diagnostic testing, tutoring, speech therapy, and other services. The Institute for Professional Learning at Groves Academy provides training to educators and schools.

Prior to coming to Groves in July 2005, John was the head of The Greenwood School, a boarding school for boys diagnosed with dyslexia. He also headed the Chartwell School, a K–8 school for dyslexic students in Seaside, California. John has taught graduate-level classes in the structure of language and in diagnostic-prescriptive teaching and has given a number of talks at national, state, and local conferences. He recently served on the Minnesota Board of Teaching’s State Reading Task Force and was instrumental in the creation of new reading rules to better prepare teachers to teach literacy skills to struggling and emerging readers. John received his M.Ed. in reading and language disabilities from Harvard University.

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