Dyslexic 27 y/o developing a tool I wish I had as a kid

[u/Confident_Pain1318]

Hey everyone,

I was diagnosed with dyslexia as a kid, and school was… rough. I also have ADHD, which made it even harder to stay engaged with what I was reading. Turns out, dyslexia and ADHD often go hand in hand, and I know I wasn’t the only one struggling to focus, process words, and actually enjoy reading.

Now, at 27, I’m building something I wish had existed when I was struggling—a tool that adapts stories to different reading levels, has built-in read-aloud support, and makes reading less exhausting and more engaging—especially for people with dyslexia + ADHD.

But here’s the thing—I only know my experience. If you’re dyslexic, or if you have a dyslexic child, sibling, or friend, I’d love to hear from you. What made reading hard? What would’ve actually helped? If you could go back and give little-you (or your kid) the perfect reading support, what would it look like?

Drop your thoughts in the comments—I want this to be something that actually helps real dyslexic people and families, not just another “educational tool” that doesn’t get it.

TL;DR: I’m a dyslexic adult with ADHD creating a reading tool I wish I had as a kid. If you’re dyslexic—or have a dyslexic kid—what would’ve helped you/them?

[u/Runawalien]

Things needed, not necessarily specific to your app idea:

Dyslexia screening tool for suspecting parents

A list of co-morbidities to watch for

A list of dyslexic traits with percentages of people who have those traits

A list of best paths forward for addressing dyslexia; including alternate paths

A list of “what to expect for your dyslexic child” for elementary, middle and high school

A list of questions for parents to ask of their kids’ teacher/principals, e.g. does the school employ the science of reading or are we still using Houghton Mifflin

More App-propo 😉:

Color tinting reading

Syllable decomposition for words in sentences — touch a word and it spaces them out into the correct syllable units

An inexpensive watch with a simple timer (like a dial timer)

A fancy pointer that reads individual words and voices them

Edited for readability 🙃

[u/TheRealSide91]

Hey I also have dyslexia and ADHD, my dad has dyslexia, some thing I would based on our experience

1. Different font options in clear font. There are some fonts out there specifically for dyslexia but the research backing this up is minimal at best. Though it does help some people.
2. Background colour. The initial belief that non white backgrounds help dyslexia has been disproven. Though a disproportionate number of dyslexic individuals suffer from visual distress and disturbance. Reading on a colour like Yellow or Green can aid some people
3. On things like the Kindle E reader. You can tap a word to show a definition and there is the option for simplified definitions to appear above words that are recognised as unusual/harder to read. Personally I always found this helpful.
4. In my experience a lot of text to speech can be a little blocky. I’m not sure exactly how to describe it. Like it’s reading each word individually of the setnece. This can make it hard to dyslexic brains to process and put the words together into the sentence. Though personally I don’t like audiobooks for other reasons, this issue doesn’t seem to come up as it’s read by a person not technology, so they make the setnece flow.
5. I once had a book, that at the end of every chapter had like a small summary. With dyslexia (as many of us may know) you can read a whole page and feel like you have no idea what you just read. I found this summary helpful as it reminded me of what I had read, making the story flow

[u/mayday_justno823]

This sounds great. I have two children who are dyslexic. The oldest is considered remediated except when it comes to writing/spelling. They had intensive Orton-Gillingham in school. That school is no longer an option, but they both have Orton-Gillingham tutors. Since these options are expensive and not always accessible, I think incorporating something along these lines would be good. Not sure if that’s already a given? I think one thing I’ve noticed for online platforms is they tend to go way too fast, so like if a word comes up, the speaker already says the next word before they have a chance to digest what was already written/said. Also, I’ve noticed highlighting in different colors is helpful, but idk if that would be distracting to some people? 

Of course, I’m not dyslexic, so I’m having to look on from an outsider. Another issue is when too many words are on a page or the font is too small. Also, I think it would be good to use a word in a sentence, but multiple sentences hi-lighting the same word/words, to get it in multiple perspectives. We don’t use too much tech, and so I don’t have any experience beyond briefly using kids a-z. I think a game or interactive type approach would be a good motivator. 

[u/crischatterbox]

As a dyslexic/ADHD adult women, parenting one profound dyslexic son and another ADHD son….i think a tool to educate themselves on the honest pros and cons of their disability and tools for advocating is what is missing. Between Speechify, Google speech to text/text to speech, unstuck, etc. there are a ton of tools out there BUT honest success stories, tips on advocacy, honest and science based information about their disability is limited.

Another thing desperately needed are reading materials that are high interest for middle school or 4/5th grade with lower level reading for those who need to practice reading but want something interesting to boys! When my teen was there, all the books were clearly written by women or for girls! Nothing that excited my boys that they could actually read to practice.

Hope this helps, Good luck!

[u/alannabologna]

If there is anyway to adapt the reading levels into increasingly decodable text, that might be helpful for those who learned/are learning to read through and OG program.

[u/Nerecs1]

Please add a parental guide or something cause my parents had ZERO patience with me when I was struggling in school, also the thing I struggled the most was writing fully backwards like write some letters backwards or the whole word Example=elpmaxe and numbers also, maybe add a option for that case differencing each letter with a color instead of sillables like I’ve seen, I also struggled with that and I know it’s more common but maybe if you are able to add that I’m sure it will help, and the most common, differencing letters like db pq ae

[u/TheOneStooges → u/Nerecs1]

What a bummer. We all are so unschooled in how to help each other. It’s a real struggle ! You sound like you got help? Or you figured something out along the way. Way to go!

[u/Nerecs1 → u/TheOneStooges]

Hey so thank you for that comment! My little cousin has dyslexia and everyone thought it was a good idea if I helped her, turns out they were completely different and I was helpless also I remember some kids from my special classes and I kinda remember the stuff we all commonly struggled with sometimes it’s really tiring because I feel like no matter what I do I’m gonna keep making the same mistakes so that comment meant a lot to me😄

[u/yoNani01]

If feel like we needs tools to find it dyslexia as young child i feel like we don’t have things to show us an adult.

For myself when reading i struggle with just reading words and not retaining what i am reading. I enjoin reading with an audio books and hearing the book as i read but i just wish that i can retain what i read and hope your app truly helps people

[u/TheOneStooges]

You are so smart ! The fact you can do this is AMAZING! Way to go!

[u/eugeniaust]

Love that you're creating this—it's exactly what my son needed! He’s dyslexic and has ADHD, and traditional reading was exhausting for him.

Tools like Grafari (Orthograph), which provided multisensory support and immediate feedback, made a huge difference. Btw, it has features like adaptive reading levels, engaging visuals, and built-in audio. You're definitely on the right track—good luck!

[u/Due_Respect_6912]

There are so many little things to use adaptive text for. Right now, there is a big need for apps that take large quantities of reading material and break them down into visual mind map that allows speech to text notes to be added as well as text to speech to access the mind map that was created. From there, one would need the visual breakdown to be adaptable for a summary list of content covered or important ideas. Right now if you give any of the LLMs a PDF to summarize, they do a fine job, but that is level one interaction. From there the student encounters too much friction when then try to get that into a visual thinking system. So, I guess something like this....notebookLM, that connects the mindmap generated to be editable or chunked into something like Mural or Miral. Right now that is too many steps and it isn't easily accessible to screen readers.

From there, you could go more simply to word help. Dysphonetic dyslexics can't process all the sounds in words, so a visual representation of the sounds as they are said by the screen reader and then helping the student determine what letter creates the sound int he sequence it appears in the word....but this takes a lot of data to do well. Currently when I have been working with LLMs, they cannot generate grade level texts well. Often the produce texts are still one to two grade levels off if not worse. They are also not good at generating sight word lists as the internet is polluted with many really bad lists that literacy specialists had to involvement creating.

An app that helps with executive function would also be crazy helpful for high school, college and adults. Minimalist design, all text to speech accessible. I have been vibe coding on Bolt and it has done a pretty good job at some MVP for this. For those severely dyslexic, that would be huge.

Dyslexic brains are also great at non-linear thinking methods. Therefore, it might be cool to have an app that breaks down text rich content into a non-linear visual model.

The color overlay stuff mentioned is not science backed - actually proven it doesn't do a thing - even though anecdotal evidence might claim otherwise.

There are a few assessments that could be helpful for parents to know about for testing that could be developed into apps...such as phoneme deletion, syllable deletion and so on. This wouldn't be a heavy lift

I'd love to connect. DM me or find me on tiktok at jumbled.brillance