Reading, Writing & Frustration

For decades, RFB&D issued its recordings on cassette tapes, a cumbersome process and bulky procedure that involved listening to as many as 10 cassettes for one book. But in 2002, the organization took a giant leap forward by introducing digitally recorded textbooks stored on CDs. With a special CD, Sarah could listen to her textbooks and skip around with a press of a button. To our surprise, RFB&D had a massive array of textbooks in stock -- even science and French texts. The organization receives school curriculum lists from around the country, and volunteers record most books. The organization will also take requests. We either ordered her books online or called the Washington office. The CDs, in a slim cardboard sleeve, showed up about a week later.

With the textbook recordings, Sarah could now do what most students do. She could move around a chapter or section, skipping or fast-forwarding through sections that she knew weren't relevant. She would curl up on her bed, earphones on, thumb on the buttons, looking at charts, maps and graphs as she read along, the words pouring into her ears. She also got Write: Outloud, speech synthesizer software that read aloud what she wrote, reducing her endless hours of proofreading or relying on us to do it.

The CDs sliced an hour or so off her homework each night. The speech synthesizer improved her writing by letting her hear what she couldn't see. She could listen for missed words (she often left out conjunctions such as "or" and prepositions such as "on" or "by") and misused words (frequently typing "their" instead of "the," and "you" instead of "your"). She was able to express more complete sentences and more complex thoughts.

But, far more important, the technology freed her from a dependence on others. She could now close the door of her room and do her homework on her own. It was still slow and painful. But it was her homework time, not our homework time.

Her math and English grades climbed from B's to A's. French moved from a B to a B+. History went from an occasional A to consistent A's. An English teacher who had noted early in the year that Sarah's sharp observations in class weren't reflected in her papers told us at the end of the year that Sarah's writing was much more fluid and, at times, even eloquent.

Best of all, Sarah stopped referring to herself as "dumb" or "not as smart as the other kids in my class." Instead, she matter-of-factly told teachers and classmates that she had dyslexia. Now, it was a disorder she could name and see -- and, with the technology, control. She made jokes about her chronic misspellings on e-mails and IMs. "What do you expect?" she said with a shrug to a friend after mangling the spelling in one. "I'm dyslexic."

In her junior year, she came up with a nickname for her sports jerseys, "Cixelsyd," ("dyslexic" spelled backward). A friend bought her a T-shirt with the slogan "Who put the sexy in dyslexic?"

Sarah's grades kept climbing. In her junior year, she reached her Holy Grail -- a grade-point average for the year of 4.1.

As Sarah heads for college next year, assistive technology continues to develop. Among other tools, there are now $150 "reading pens," the size of a large felt-tip marker -- hand-held text scanners that read aloud words or lines of text. Screen readers are now built into word-processing software to read information on the screen using synthesized speech. More advanced versions will read aloud the text on Web pages. And that's just the beginning.

Studies have shown that assistive technology improves the reading rate and comprehension of students with reading disabilities, improves their spelling and helps them find significantly more errors in their written compositions. One study found that college students with learning disabilities get higher writing scores when using speech recognition software than those who use a human transcriber or write without assistance. Just as important, it frees dyslexics such as Sarah from relying on someone else to learn, giving a boost to their self-confidence.

Will Sarah continue availing herself of all this new technology in college? She's still a stubborn teenager, so probably not at first.

But as her mother, I feel good knowing it's there whenever she needs it.