Writing for Challenged Readers

What dyslexic & ESL readers teach us about writing

In this connected world, a surprising number of readers have reading difficulties. Knowing how to write for their needs can expand your audience. At the same time, it can help make your work more readable for normal readers.

Image by Pixabay

Three things to consider:

• Dyslexia: This reading disability affects 10% of all Americans (30 million), including a third of entrepreneurs and about 20% of engineers, architects, and artists. People with dyslexia are trying to read your content and might use it to do something awesome.
• English as a Second Language (ESL): In America today, 60 million people (18%) speak a language other than English at home. More than half speak great English, but 25 million (8%) speak English “less than very well” and are considered Limited English Proficient (LEP). What percentage of of your readers are ESL or LEP?
• Global audiences: An increasing worldwide audience is consuming English content due to the Internet and globalization. But many of those readers struggle because English is not their first language. If you compete with other writers for that audience, do you want to be the one whose content is the hardest to read?

In this article, I’ll share some surprising things I’ve learned about dyslexic readers and ESL readers, and what some of them said when I asked how to make writing more accessible to them.

Dyslexia

Dyslexia accounts for 80% of all “learning disabilities”, but it has nothing to do with intelligence. It’s just a difference in how the brain handles reading. And it’s much more common than most people think. It probably affects some of your readers, as well as a few of your friends, so it’s worth a little time here.

Researchers have many theories on how dyslexia works. For example:

• Some researchers have claimed it’s a left/right mix-up in the visual cortex.
• Another theory says dyslexics form an unusually high number of links between distant neurons. This would make them good at seeing subtle connections and big pictures, but bad at fine details and memorization.
• Brain scans of dyslexics show differences in the timing of signals between different areas of the brain. This would interfere with the synchronization required for reading.
• One researcher told me that dyslexics may perceive extremely fine distinctions in speech sounds, making it hard to map our simple alphabet and phonetic rules to the rich set of sounds they actually hear.

Dyslexic children find it hard to recognize rhymes or identify phonetic components such as letter sounds and syllables. Any good theory needs to account for that.

Since dyslexics are not good at “sounding out” written words, some therapies focus on learning to recognize common words by sight. This is done with lots of repetition. They train the visual cortex the way you would train an artificial neural network. All of us use that approach to some extent — do you really sound out t-h-e every time you see it? But it has its limits. At one software company where I worked, meeting rooms were assigned imaginative names based on mock Latin, like magic words from Harry Potter. The difficulty of sounding out the long, nonsense names made the rooms almost useless to dyslexics. They could see the meeting on their calendar, but had trouble reading the location. In this case, they spoke to management, and the meeting rooms were given new names that were more readable.

Is Dyslexia a Defect?

Here’s a true fact: dyslexia did not exist until 5,000 years ago! That’s when writing was invented. Dyslexia didn’t interfere with hunting, farming, or other pre-literate skills. People sometimes call it a disorder, but it’s not a mental or physical defect. It’s just a trait that makes reading difficult.

Some professions have twice the usual percentage of dyslexics, including engineering, architecture, and the visual arts. (This may have to do with the “big picture” strength mentioned earlier.) Dyslexics have no trouble with audible speech. In fact, a dyslexic’s college survival skills include the use of recordings and text-to-speech technology. So it’s not a question of “dumbing down” ideas for dyslexics. In fact, several dyslexic scientists have won the Nobel Prize, and there have even been famous dyslexic writers, including Anne Rice (Interview with the Vampire) and F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby). It’s just a matter of writing in an accessible way. The tips later in this article, and the rest of my series on readability, will help.

Do you really have dyslexic readers? Most of us have dyslexic acquaintances, whether we know it or not. To convince you, I’ll list a few dyslexics you’ve heard of. Feel free to skip this if you’re short of time: Alexander Graham Bell, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, James Clerk Maxwell, Michael Faraday, Henry Ford, Albert Einstein, Richard Branson, Charles Schwab, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Keira Knightley, Orlando Bloom, Jim Carrey, Tom Cruise, Danny Glover, Jennifer Aniston, Henry Winkler, Whoopi Goldberg, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Auguste Rodin, Ansel Adams, Harry Belafonte, Tommy Smothers, Nelson Rockefeller, Erin Brockovich, George Patton, Tommy Hilfiger, Muhammad Ali, Gustave Flaubert, Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy, George Washington, Magic Johnson, Tommy Hilfiger, Nolan Ryan, Guy Ritchie, Stephen J. Cannell, Walt Disney, Steven Spielberg.

So it’s clear that dyslexics who get support can learn coping mechanisms and become functional readers. However, many don’t get a diagnosis or ever get help. (Especially females, for some reason.) Ten percent of Americans don’t graduate from high school, but for dyslexics, the number is 35% — more than one-third. If you lack a diploma, are a poor reader, and have always felt different, life can be very hard. It’s estimated that the rate of dyslexia in prison is as high as 50%.

There’s a growing body of research on how how to teach dyslexics to read. But very little is said about how to write for dyslexics. One great exception is the short article Writing for Dyslexic Readers by Caroline Lawrence. If you’ve read my other pieces on readability, then nothing on her list will surprise you. What may surprise you is that most of her suggestions about writing for dyslexics will also help your normal readers. You may even start to notice that a few very popular authors use the same tricks.

English as a Second Language (ESL)

I’m writing this in Silicon Valley, which connects San Francisco and San Jose. Because of geography, history, and tech jobs, it’s one of the most linguistically diverse regions in America. Other such regions exist around New York, Washington, Houston, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Boston, San Diego, Chicago, Orlando, Miami, Phoenix, etc. If you live outside of urban areas and away from our southern border, the linguistic diversity of the US may not be obvious to you. Within the next decade or two, it will be. This is not just due to immigration, but to an increasingly connected world.

In 2015, 10% of American students were classified as English Language Learners (ELL). This was up from 8% in 2000, a slight increase after adjusting for general population growth. Of these ELL students, 77% speak Spanish at home, followed by Arabic, Chinese, Vietnamese, etc. This happens in regional concentrations that people from other areas are probably unaware of. For instance, Arabic is spoken in 2.4% of homes nationwide, but 24% around Detroit. In Maine, according to one source, the most common non-English home language is Somali; in Vermont, it’s Nepali. American Native languages are spoken in many homes. Since I happen to be a technical writer, I’m aware that over 60% of engineers in Silicon Valley were born in other countries, and about half of them (30% of engineers here) speak a different language when they go home at night.

Nationally, as noted earlier, 60 million of us fall into the ESL category. The majority of those people are proficient in English. But one source claims 25 million speak English “less than very well” and are considered Limited English Proficient (LEP). This number is up from 22 million in 2000, roughly consistent with general US population growth.

Photo by Jessica D. Vega on Unsplash

How Hard Is It to Read a Foreign Language?

An average fluent English speaker knows 20,000 to 30,000 “words”, where multiple forms of the word collectively count as a single word — walk, walks, walked, walking, etc. According to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), a vocabulary of 1,000 words covers 80% of an average text, but misses a lot of key meaning: “I’m worried about my_____, so today I talked to a __________, who suggested _____.” By comparison, school students after a few years of foreign language class know about 3,000 words, which cover 95% of average text. At 5,000 words you’re up to 98%, but you’ll still have trouble with jargon, technical language, and authors who prefer exquisite, evocative, or erudite phrasing.

If you reach 10,000 words, not quite half the vocabulary of a native speaker, you won’t have trouble with most writers in magazines, popular fiction, etc. But it’s a game of diminishing returns. Doubling your vocabulary to 10,000 words only gained you 1%. The very last 1% of language in a text requires another doubling or tripling, which takes more years of motivated work. In real life, most ESL speakers by that point have run out of motivation, even if they speak English at work. And if they aren’t in school and don’t speak English at home, they may plateau at a lower level, as limited-proficiency (LEP) speakers.

English is a blend of German, French, Latin, and Greek. It continually gains new material from its own subcultures as well as various international cultures and languages. This richness makes it one of the most difficult languages to learn. Search for “poems about why English is hard” and you’ll see a catalog of clever laments that exploit words like tough, though, bough, cough, etc. A famous study showed that British children, during the first four years of school, fall far behind children from other countries in the spelling of basic vocabulary words in their native language. The students who do best come from countries with languages that have standardized spelling, like Spanish, where each letter or combination generally has only one possible sound. This is one of the reasons Germany (1996) and Brazil (2009) both recently passed orthography laws to simplify the spelling of their languages.

What ESL & Dyslexic Readers Told Me About Readability

I interact with a few dozen software engineers every week while writing and editing technical documentation. As noted above, a high percentage of them have some level of dyslexia or are not lifelong English speakers. I’ve learned a lot from them in conversation, but I also formally interviewed a handful of them, including 2 dyslexic engineering managers, on how to make documentation more accessible to them.

They all easily came up with specific suggestions for making the reading easier, which I’ve listed below. They know what makes their lives harder. Here again, most of their suggestions are the same things we do to increase readability for normal readers. If you’ve seen my other pieces about readability, you’ll recognize these tips immediately.

• Simple words, short sentences: When I asked what writers can do to make their lives easier, this was the first thing they mentioned.
• Familiar, recognizable words: Dyslexics are bad at sounding out words (phonics or phonology). Many of them practice on common words so they can visually recognize them. As shown by the Harry Potter story above, new or uncommon words cause them a lot of work.
• Clear, direct sentences: Sentences of the SVO form (subject-verb-object) tend to be easier to read than passive or complex constructions. An entire document of these would sound robotic, so mix in sentences of different length and structure. But use a lot of SVO.
• Short paragraphs: If reading is hard, there must be a sense of satisfaction every time you finish a paragraph and confidently understand it. So a long paragraph can be discouraging — you’re crawling toward the next rewarding bit of white space, wanting a chance to breathe and process what you’ve read. As a writer, I like to use a long sentence or paragraph to completely capture a big idea in a single unit. But sometimes we have to choose between elegance and audience. As the saying goes, “Write to express, not to impress.”
• Clear structure & topics: My informants told me they like tables of contents, clear titles, and section headings. These all show structure and identify the topic or the reading goal. Studies show that these contextual clues help readers understand.
• Context & introductions: Along the same lines, provide overviews or introductions — for the document, the chapter, the section, and even some of the paragraphs. Should a person have to read an entire section before knowing the topic, or scan an entire set of instructions to know what it does? In one study, researchers asked people to read instructions for building a kite that never used the word kite or explained the goal. You can imagine what happened and why people refer to this study.
• Use a little redundancy, such as examples or explanations that confirm and expand the reader’s understanding: This lateral two-point connection makes your kite more stable.
• Diagrams can pull information together and help create or confirm the reader’s understanding. Researchers in cognitive-load learning theory tell us the diagram should not just repeat things and waste time, but should consolidate, clarify, or add information. They further urge us to limit round trips by placing the image near the relevant text (not on a separate page), including labels or necessary text in the diagram, and providing a caption. As you should do with a hyperlink, signal to the reader whether it’s optional and whether they should read it now or later. I’d also suggest keeping in mind whether it’s a concept diagram (relatively simple to digest as part of the reading) or a reference diagram (like a detailed blueprint, useful for study, not for immediate reading in the middle of an explanation).
• No unnecessary reading: Dyslexics don’t appreciate unnecessary words or ideas. Even some normal readers will wish that you show that long history or detailed reference table apart from the main flow, in a sidebar or appendix. Or put it in a separate section with a clear heading, so readers know what it is before they invest effort. Writing for ESLs and dyslexics is consistent with a modular writing style that defines things in a single place, covers a distinct topic in one module or flow, and helps readers decide which modules they can skip. I’m not talking about a Jason Bourne novel that interweaves many plot threads in a suspenseful way. I’m talking about how to explain things in a way that lets people build a mental framework and confidently fill it with the level of detail they need.

Readability and Literature

A senior Silicon Valley engineer I interviewed speaks 3 languages and has lived and worked in many countries. He speaks English with very little accent but sometimes hesitates when choosing a word. At one point he tried reading novels to improve his English. On a friend’s recommendation, he started with the American classic To Kill a Mockingbird. My delight at hearing this quickly turned to sad surprise. He found the book difficult, barely got through it, and never fully understood the plot or felt its beauty or emotional impact. “That was almost ten years ago, and I’ve never read another English novel since,” he told me in his barely-detectable accent.

You may remember Mockingbird as a pleasure to read, but he’s not alone in finding it hard. Look online and you’ll find readers and teachers who love its powerful message but find its artful expression a challenge even for American readers (example). It’s an endless series of implied truths, rather than clear statements. It uses regional dialects, time skips, clever expressions (“the day’s crimes” to mean “the day’s play activities”), etc. It has many, many examples of 1950s language that’s considered offensive today. It was a bestseller and won a Pulitzer Prize. Despite the difficult language, it was somehow translated into 40 languages. (See my piece Readability Equals Translatability for thoughts on this.) But it’s not as easy to read as a self-help book, escapist novel, or how-to guide, or even a typical news article. It’s more an example of art literature than popular entertainment.

For a normal reader, decoding these luxurious obscurities may leave little mental reserve for processing the meaning and feeling the emotion. For a challenged reader, the task may be hopeless. That leaves a writer with difficult choices. Should we use the perfect word, or the readable word? Is written art about sophisticated language, or potent ideas? A lot depends on who we write for and why we write.

Resources

Articles in This Series

• A Cognitive Model of Reading - The science of how people read
• Surface Readability - The value and limits of simple “short words & sentences” approaches to readability, and some interesting variations
• A Deeper Readability - Techniques that go beyond surface-based approaches, based on cognitive science and other sources
• Writing for Challenged Readers - About ESL & dyslexic readers, and what they said helps them most
• Readability Equals Translatability - How the right approach to readability becomes a scalable approach to fast, consistent translation across multiple languages, how that works in a modular, single-source content management system, and whether language must be “dumbed-down” to achieve readability

Sources

• The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads, Daniel Willingham, 2017
• Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Maryanne Wolf, 2008
• The Dyslexic Advantage: Unlocking the Hidden Potential of the Dyslexic Brain, Brocke L. Eide, MD, MA and Fernette F. Eide, MD, 2012
• Dyslexic Entrepreneurs: The Incidence; Their Coping Strategies and Their Business Skills, Julie Logan, Cass Business School, London 2009
• Twelve Tips When Writing for Dyslexic Readers by Caroline Lawrence, May 21, 2014, published in the blog of Barrington Stoke, a publisher of dyslexic-friendly fiction
• The Limited English Proficient Population in the United States in 2013, July 8, 2015, by Lia Zhong and Jeanne Batalova, Migration Policy Institute
• The Rule of 2 — How Many Words You Should Know (for Every Language Level), Bartosz Czekala, Universe of Memory, 2015
• Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Wikipedia)