Design for Dyslexics, Part One

As designers, every day we think about what face-to-face trials our users face and choose those solutions that can help them. This week, UX designer Andrew Zusman will tell us about the problem that dyslexics face all over the world: the problem of not perceiving reality, which is so obvious to many of us.

We have 52 cards of the playing deck and the task is to sort them in any way. We can make two stacks of them, decomposing them into red and black, and leave it that way. We could also divide these 2 piles into 4 by suit. Complicating the approach, it would be possible to sort the cards in each of the 4 sets at face value from ace to king.

Suppose we gave these decks of cards to a random person. You can expect him to be able to pull out a particular card.
For example, if you ask for an ace of spades to be pulled out, then he or she will be able to do this easily turning the decks over and determining the sort order. This is an understandable expectation, but it is based on the assumption that the perception of the one who is looking for a map and the sorter are identical.

What happens if he cannot determine the sort order? What happens if they can determine the sort order, but finding a specific map will take extra time?

For dyslexics around the world, this is a real test. Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativitysays 20% of the population has dyslexia, but planners and designers are generally poorly trained to create dyslexic-adapted products. In this article we will look at my research and what I managed to learn about dyslexia. In the second part, we will discuss 5 universal design principles from the North Carolina Universal Design Center, which I believe can be incorporated into any design process to improve design for dyslexics.

Definition of dyslexia


Dyslexia is a cognitive impairment of reading , due to which the brain experiences difficulties in converting words to sounds and vice versa. As a result, reading becomes a challenge. Due to cognitive difficulties in recognizing written language, many dyslexics may confuse words similar in spelling: the word “COT” may not differ for them from the word “CURRENT”. Since dyslexia affects a large percentage of the population, it can manifest itself in various ways. For example, in one person a disease can cause mild difficulty in reading, while another does not know how to cope with the simplest sentences.

Statistical reports show a different percentage of people with dyslexia among the world's population. The British Dyslexia Association speaks of10% of people with dyslexia , while the Institute for Dyslexia Research in America claims that this figure is 15%.

Regardless of the exact number of patients, the fact remains that it is simply a huge number of people. The number of blind users simply fades in comparison with this, but most likely most designers understand much better how to do certain things for the blind than for patients with dyslexia.

Interest in dyslexia


My own interest in the study of dyslexia in terms of UX began when I met Francois Roshdi, an information architect at the Swedish company Border Crossing Media. He is dyslexic. When I asked him about how his frustration affects his work, he replied that he perceives all the information in parts, before combining it into a general idea. In other words, if you give Francois our deck of cards, he will see 52 decks in it on one card before proceeding with the analysis of the deck as one set and the definition of the sorting algorithm. Inspired by Roshdy's explanation, I decided to learn more about dyslexia. I talked with approximately 35 dyslexics and asked them how they interact with web and mobile applications. The result was, in my opinion,

I was able to identify 2 main reasons because of which previous studies do not reach an acceptable level. The first is that research has focused on graphic design. This is undoubtedly an important aspect of this area, but graphic design is only part of what human-system interaction is all about. Typographers, in particular, sought to create fonts that would be less difficult for dyslexics to read. In addition to this, graphic design guidelines were released, which were included in the collection of standard recommendations for improving the availability of web content(the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 / WCAG 2.0). They describe working with text and contrast. It helped me a lot in research, but this is only part of the puzzle.

The second reason for the lack of relevance of previous studies was the fact that they were carried out several years ago, and our field has changed a lot since then. Several attempts have been made to develop guidelines for creating interfaces for dyslexics (formally based on the few studies that existed at that time), but this happened before the distribution of typical interface elements on mobile and tablets. The type and form of human interaction with interfaces is developing as fast as users learn to use new interface solutions, so they are faced with new trends every day. As a result, the guidelines, which were a work of art in 2010, are unlikely to be finalized to the required quality level in 2014 and later. Even if these studies covered the full range of UX problems from the point of view of dyslexia, they would have been outdated.

My research


When I started my own research, my goal was to understand how you can improve the approach to creating products for dyslexics. I started with a series of interviews with Roshdy that helped me understand exactly what problems dyslexia patients face, what questions to ask and where to find additional information. With it, I formed 10 questions that I wanted to ask:

  1. When was your dyslexia diagnosed?
  2. How would you describe your dyslexia and its impact on others?
  3. What difficulties do you experience due to dyslexia?
  4. What are the potential benefits of your dyslexia?
  5. Which sites or mobile applications do you find convenient to use?
  6. What makes them comfortable?
  7. Which sites or mobile apps do you find difficult to use?
  8. What makes them so complicated?
  9. What would you like people to know about dyslexia?
  10. If you have any comments or additional information, please write it below.


As a doctor who treats the whole patient, and not the individual symptoms, I tried to learn not only about the interaction of dyslexics with digital products, but also about the dyslexics themselves. Was dyslexia something they were ashamed of or are they happy to be like that? How does this change their behavior? About 35 people answered my questions. I found most of them through groups on facebook for dyslexics or parents diagnosed with dyslexia in children. The administrators of these groups were happy to help me with the survey. Many respondents were glad to talk with me outside the survey and give more detailed information, provide links to other thematic resources. After 2 months, I had a huge amount of data, and I was able to identify several trends and approaches, as well as 3 main ideas.

# 1: Dyslexia manifests itself in people in a variety of ways


The first thing I learned: dyslexia manifests itself in people in a variety of ways. Some say it’s easy to read, but hard to write; others - that everything is exactly the opposite. There are people whose breakdown has spread to math; numbers are the biggest difficulty for them. Some explained their clumsiness with dyslexia. What seemed like a problem with words actually goes far beyond reading.

As I wrote above, previous discussions on dyslexia in web design focused on improving typography or color contrast. This does not greatly solve the problem of using e-commerce sites. Just imagine that you do not know how much money you will spend on your next purchase or that you are not sure of the correctness of the written address. One dyslexic wrote to me: “I’m afraid to pay for something via the Internet and withdraw money from an ATM (!)”.

# 2: Dyslexia may be an advantage


Illustration for the article about Delexia

The second thing I learned: some perceive their diagnosis as an advantage. There is no cure for dyslexia, but many find ways to cope with the disorder or their own approaches to the process, which allows them to overcome learning difficulties. A good example of a successful dyslexic business is Richard Branson [eng: 1 , 2 ], one of the managing owners of the Virgin Group holding, whose difficulties caused by the disorder were accurately recorded in the autobiography [book “ To hell with everything, take it and do it ”].

In his recent book, “ David and Goliath: The Losers, the Dregs of the Art of the Fighting Giants,David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants"Malcolm Gledvel uses dyslexia as an example of" desirable difficulty "[ eng ] in an attempt to show how these things can be a source of forward movement for some people. Gladwell cites the example of successful dyslexic entrepreneurs who attribute their success to dyslexia. In particular, he talks about Gary Cohn, president of the Goldman Sachs conglomerate investment bank. It seemed strange to me, so I began to ask a question about the benefits of dyslexia. Most dyslexics explained that their way of solving problems was different from that of their colleagues. They said that they could “connect everything together” in their head not like other people, and this, of course, was their undeniable advantage.

# 3: Designing for people with dyslexia - a unique challenge


Finally, I asked the respondents to explain which sites, applications and devices are convenient and help them in life. The answers were very different from each other. I expected to see obvious trends that would describe what works in the field of web and mobile applications and what does not, but there is no single solution. I noticed only one general trend: 5 basic principles of universal design are useful in designing for dyslexics. Key points here: flexibility, simplicity, focus on information, accounting for user errors, the sound use of certain elements. The application of these principles we will consider in the second part.

Moving forward


Dyslexia is mistakenly considered a learning problem. Although in a broad sense this is so, I met many users who tried to explain to me that the manifestations of dyslexia can be very different.

Not every designer, having read this article, will immediately be puzzled by the design issue for dyslexics, but I hope to convey the idea of ​​how important it is to take into account dyslexics in the design process. I believe that understanding this is the first step towards improving interfaces, not only for people with disorders, but for all users in general.



Translation of Andrew Zusman's original article, “ Designing for Dyslexia, Part 1, ” published on UX Booth . Translated and published with permission of the author. Editing by Maria Yorema and Stella Hon .

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