Understanding and Supporting Dyslexia

October is Dyslexia Awareness Month, a great time to focus on a difference in how the brain learns. This difference impacts many people, but for too long, many people haven’t understood it. This has meant that millions of students who struggle with reading don’t get the help they need right away.

It’s important to understand what dyslexia is so we can help everyone learn to read. Literacy is a fundamental human right. Everyone deserves the ability to read and write in order to reach their full potential, ensure lifelong learning, and achieve success.

Dyslexia by the Numbers: How Many People Are Affected?

Dyslexia is not rare. It is much more common than most people think Experts like the Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity and the International Dyslexia Association (IDA) agree that dyslexia affects between 15% to 20% of the population. Think of it this way: out of every five to seven people you meet, one might have dyslexia.

Approximately 15%-20% of the population is dyslexic

according to the Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity and the International Dyslexia Association (IDA)

This difference represents the vast majority—between 80-90%—of all individuals identified with a learning disability, making dyslexia the most common of all neuro-cognitive learning disorders This high prevalence underscores a critical point: dyslexia is a major educational and societal issue that requires universal awareness and effective, evidence-based instructional responses.

What Exactly Is Dyslexia?

Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that comes from a difference in the brain. It makes it hard to accurately and smoothly recognize words, spell, and sound out words (decoding). These problems happen because of a difficulty with the phonological component of language. This just means the ability to recognize and work with the individual sounds (called phonemes) in spoken words.

What Dyslexia Is NOT:

It’s vital to understand that dyslexia is not a sign of low intelligence. People with dyslexia have average, above-average, or even gifted intelligence. Many of the world’s most successful people—artists, scientists, and business owners—have dyslexia. They often have great strengths in areas like:

Creative problem-solving
Spatial reasoning (understanding shapes and space)
“Big picture” thinking

Dyslexia is also not caused by poor vision. It is a language-based difference in how the brain handles written and spoken words.

Clearing Up Common Myths

Even though there has been a lot of research, some myths about dyslexia still prevent people from getting the right help.

Myth 1: People with dyslexia see letters and words backward. Fact: This is the most harmful myth. Dyslexia is not a vision problem. The difficulty isn’t in how the eyes see the letters, but in how the brain understands and connects the letters to their sounds. A person with dyslexia struggles to connect the letter symbols to the correct sounds and blend those sounds to read a word.
Myth 2: Dyslexia is a sign of laziness or low intelligence. Fact: This is completely false. People with dyslexia often have to work much harder than others just to complete basic reading tasks. Their struggles come from a different brain wiring, not a lack of effort or intellect. If they seem frustrated or anxious about reading, it’s usually because their learning difference hasn’t been addressed.
Myth 3: Colored overlays or special fonts are the main treatments for dyslexia. Fact: Since dyslexia is not a visual problem, visual fixes like colored overlays don’t fix the core issue with sound processing. While some accommodations can help, the best way to treat dyslexia is with explicit, systematic, and structured reading instruction.

Why Early Help is Critical

Early recognition and support are the single most important things that can help a child with dyslexia succeed at reading.

When dyslexia is not recognized or is treated with methods that don’t work, the results can be devastating:

Academic Struggle: Reading is the foundation for almost every subject in school. Difficulty reading leads to difficulty across the entire curriculum.
Emotional Harm: Unexplained reading struggles can cause low self-esteem, anxiety, frustration, and make a child believe they are “not smart.”
Delayed Development: The longer a child waits for effective help, the harder it is for their brain to build the necessary reading skills.

Debbie Meyer is the Director of Community Engagement and Recruitment and an adjunct professor of education at Iona University. She is a fierce advocate for dyslexia awareness who teaches courses on the Science of Reading. She recognizes that the “dyslexia to prison pipeline” is a huge societal issue. Helping ensure that dyslexic students get the tools and instruction they need to break that cycle is her mission.

“Schools need to check and make sure that incoming teachers know how to teach students to read,” says Debbie. Many colleges and universities don’t adequately prepare new teachers to teach their students to read.

Instruction is important; so is the material they read as they learn to decode, especially for dyslexic students. “Kids need both mirrors and windows,” explains Meyer. “They need to see themselves in the things they’re being taught; they need windows to the world that they don’t know. Having culturally relevant books is really important, too.”

“Kids need both mirrors and windows. They need to see themselves in the things they’re being taught; they need windows to the world that they don’t know.”

Debbie Meyer, Professor of Education and Dyslexia Advocate

Tumbleweed: Designed for the Dyslexic Reader

At Tumbleweed, we understand that a “one-size-fits-all” approach to reading instruction fails about one-fifth of the population. That’s why we create decodable readers specifically for dyslexic, neurodivergent, and striving readers.

We believe that learning to read should be an achievable and joyful journey, not a constant struggle.

Our books are designed to:

Minimize Distractions: They separate text from images to avoid overwhelming dyslexic readers and minimizing word guessing.
Provide Structured Practice: The text carefully follows the Five Pillars of Structured Literacy. This means a child only sees the sound and spelling patterns they have been taught.

This systematic and success-focused approach helps students:

Build Confidence: Success with reading encourages further learning and helps students feel positive about themselves as readers.
Develop Decoding Skills: Targeted practice strengthens the sound-processing skills needed to recognize words automatically.
Instill a Love of Reading: When the struggle is reduced, the joy of discovering a story can finally grow.

This Dyslexia Awareness Month, we encourage every parent, teacher, and employer to understand the science of dyslexia and the power of proper support. With the right tools, like structured literacy and decodable books, we can help all children build the strong foundation they need to access the world of print, discover a lifelong love of reading, and enter into a new world of opportunity.