Here at Aventido, we work with a range of assistive technology that can help students with specific learning differences to work to their strengths within the Education System.

If we consider dyslexia and the impact that dyslexia has on reading and writing, a frequently used type of technology to support this is known as ‘Speech-To-Text', but for those who are new to assistive technology, it may be simpler to understand the term as ‘dictation’. In this post, we seek to answer the question how does dictation help with dyslexia?

How does dictation help with dyslexia?

Speech-to-text software provides a way to convert speech into text on a computer. For some students with dyslexia, having to handwrite or type coursework could be something that they physically struggle with. They might know what to write but the act of ‘decoding’ that into written text just doesn’t happen. Within a school setting, it would be easy to judge this behaviour as lazy, not engaged, or misbehaving and if a student is under pressure to do something that they can’t do, then they may well ‘act out’ as a way of protecting themselves or diverting attention away from what they are struggling with. The reality however is that they simply do not have what they need to be able to express their learning and speech-to-text may help.

In the following video, a school in Southern Australia has been utilising this technology with a product called Dragon Naturally Speaking within the classroom. The learning support teachers within the video talk about how this technology empowers dyslexic learners to access the curriculum and become independent learners without the need for a scribe or other human support.