Page 127 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report

and digital format) for society as a whole. But in addition it can be a perfect travelling companion for readers with special needs – people who have difficulty holding or turning the pages of a paper book, who can access a whole universe of reading materials weighing less than 200 grams by simply clicking – as well as other limitations which we will discuss below.
Dyslexia, the silent enemy of reading
One of the main problems of accessing print literature is dyslexia. As far as we know, it is a hereditary neurological condition. It is a per- sistent and specific disorder that makes it diffi- cult for sufferers to learn to read and write. It is found in children with no physical, psychological or sociocultural handicaps and affects their cog- nitive development. It also has a major impact on emotional and social aspects. It currently affects some 5–10% of children and adults – that is, millions of people all over the world. In Spain alone 700,000 schoolchildren are dyslexic.
People who suffer from dyslexia have difficulties linking letters and sounds and deciphering the words they learn; they invert and reverse letters, numbers and words; confuse phonetically similar words; and have poor reading comprehension skills, among other problems.57 Dyslexia is there- fore one of the main reasons why children fail and drop out of school in our country (it is thought that 40% of cases of school failure in Spain are caused by dyslexia58), where there are still no specific policies for addressing this disorder.59
Technology is proving to be a very valuable
ally in detecting and working on dyslexia. The application Dytective for Samsung,60 for example, can detect this disorder in a matter of minutes with 90% precision. The tool, developed by Change Dyslexia thanks to research conducted at Carrnegie Mellon University in collaboration with other universities, is free and multiplatform and incorporates into the test linguistic and attention games and artificial intelligence for the
early detection of the risk of dyslexia. Change Dyslexia has also created DytectiveU, a tool for working on dyslexia.
Another well-known tool for treating dyslexia
is Dyseggxia (Piruletras in Spanish)61 developed by the specialist Luz Rello to help boys and girls overcome their problems through play. The app has three levels of difficulty, which are designed according to word frequency in Spanish, word length and number of similar words. Each level includes different types of exercises: find the missing letter, delete the extra letter, replace the wrong letter, derivations, and separate words that are joined together in sentences. They are all designed to combat this language disorder.
Galexia by Pambudev is another app for working on dyslexia that is highly rated by users. It is an educational game designed to improve dyslexia, reading fluency and speaking difficulties and takes users on an intergalactic voyage accompa- nied by an alien. It consists of 24 play sessions featuring puzzles, riddles and other games. The application supports an evidence-based and scientifically proven intervention programme.
A third example of the many that are currently available on the market is Gitmo’s Sanapalabras. This app was designed according to phonoaudi- ological criteria so that children learn the words and phonetics and overcome the challenges of the Spanish language through play. It contains four games, each focused on improving or practising an aspect of language and words. One of them (Diglexiatis) is intended to help cases of dyslexia above all.
But over and above these specific developments, digital formats in general offer many possibilities to people whose dyslexia impairs their access to print literature. In 1970 Herman Bouma proved that when similar objects (such as letters) are grouped together very closely, this grouping interferes with the brain’s ability to discern
each of its elements, a phenomenon known as “crowding”. This phenomenon limits the number
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Readers in the digital age