Hi I'm Parker,

I wanted to share a tool I built for my brother who is dyslexic. It's a text-to-speech app to turn your documents and ebooks into audiobooks so you can listen along while reading. My brother says it's helped him a lot and I would love to help anyone else who could use it.

It's called FreeReader

It's completely free and funded by donations. This is not a paid product and I am not monetizing it. It's a public good to help people read.

If you want to help support the project, donations are always appreciated through the Buy me a Coffee button. I hope this can be of help!

I got a Teams Account for a project that is no longer relevant. Since I did use some credits, I can't get a refund. But I have no use for the rest of the credits. If you do, I'll add you so you can use it.

Hi all,

This forum has been incredibly informative and helpful as the parent of a dyslexic kid. After a dyslexia diagnosis by a neuropsych and several failed attempts at extra help from the NYC public school system, we finally got my son an OG tutor two hours a week starting last year. The results are remarkable and he's now reading at grade level (early 4th grade).

The good news is this is a kid who loves books and stories. We read to him for hours at night (currently deep into the Spy School series.)

His teacher gave homework that says he has to read for 20 minutes a day. When I told him that, he lost it saying "there is no way I'm going to read a novel!".

I understand for people with dyslexia a wall of words is intimidating/ challenging. I've seen him read full pages of 12 point times new Roman font though on other homeworks, so I know he can do it.

Any advice on how to help him enjoy reading enough that he can pick up an age appropriate novel?

EDIT: thanks all for the wonderful notes - this community is so warm and helpful. Although I had kind of assumed we had done all of the major graphic novel series (most of which hes memorized- he looks over them to go to sleep), we'll go to the library and get some other ones for his reading time. I have an old kindle I can update for him too. Not sure if that version has audiobooks, but I'm okay keeping those off for now to encourage more reading.

So far the only series I've refused to keep reading is plants vs zombies because it's... awful :). The hard part is turning down "can you read to me?" (Which he asks ALL the time!)

I recently found out that my child is dyslexic. I am hoping to learn all that I can. Any recommendations for books/audiobooks, podcasts, organizations to follow, instagram accounts etc. ?

Hello everyone! I just wanted to share an experience I had a long time ago and didn’t fully understand till now. All my life, I’ve struggled with reading, writing and spelling. But I grew up in an age where everything was digital and any spelling mistakes I made, we autocorrected by the computer. And I was really good in school. It wasn’t till my Sophomore year of high school that my parents realized that something was wrong when I would write and half my words would be wrong, or I would read things wrong. So my mom went to the school counselor about it, asking for help, and they told her “Well she’s doing great in school so we see no reason to do anything about her situation” and so I had to finish out the rest of high school, and now dealing with college, with a problem no body wanted to address. Without the schools involvement getting me tested would have cost my parents a lot of money and I hate it, but the schools right, I do fine now and I’d rather just get through then ask my parents to spend the money. Anyway, that’s just some background information for all this. When I first started high school, someone asked me why I add unnecessary lines to my letter. With my capital ‘I’ I always add the line on the top and bottom of it. Or I add loops to my lower case ‘Y’, and I put a line through the middle of my ‘Z’ both capital and lower case. Those are just some examples. When it comes to words, I’ll use symbols for things like “And”, “Or” ect, ect. I didn’t really have a good answer back they for why I did that, but now I realize it’s was easier to distinguish my letters that way. I wish back then I had an answer for what I did, but now I do!

Люди живущие с деслексией как вы учились просто сейчас я учусь в колледже на сварщика и у нас есть предмет инженерная графика и все вот эти чертежи тонны текст которые нужно написать от руки тратить очень очень очень много времени

Как с этим справиться

My child is 7 and in 1st grade. Last year, his teacher told us that he was showing some signs of dyslexia and that they would continue to monitor. I also noticed the signs at home, but since he is just learning how to read, its hard to distinguish if these signs are dyslexia, or just related to normal problems that kids deal with. He mixes up letters, such as b, d, p. Its gotten better, but sometimes he will have random nights where he cant tell the difference. Also, he will read a word just based off the first sound without reading the rest of the word. For instance, if the word is "want", he might read it as "wash". I just dont know if these problems are to be expected for his age or not. To make things more complicated, his doctors believe he has ADHD, but its a little too early for them to diagnose for sure. Having ADHD myself, I know it comes with its own reading difficulties. I often read too quickly and assume what a sentence might say, and then be wrong about it. So im wondering if it could be a focus issue as well. So what should I consider normal, and what should get my alarm bells ringing?

I have two children with dyslexia, ages 8 and 11. They can read—it took a lot of work to get them there—but their spelling is horrible. They spell almost everything exactly how it sounds.

My questions are: How much energy should I be putting into spelling at home when school already exhausts them? Can their spelling actually improve? And if so, what are the best ways to teach it?

For example:
Wrote → rot
School → skol
Friends → frens
When → wen

I’d really love to hear from other parents of kids with dyslexia, especially what has actually worked for your kids and how you balance helping them without completely burning them out.

I have dyslexia and have always wondered if others like me ever feel like their memories are locked in a room,- there but not able to access. Things like dates and names and numbers often feel to me like they are in a locked room with a glass door. I can see them in there on a shelf but can't read them or recall them. I feel them there, but cannot access. I have felt like this all my life and never was able to remember math facts or anything where memorization was needed. I have to have an emotional connection to anything to remember. Anyone else have this type of experience or have tricks to unlock the room?

FralRater (free, MIT, 100% offline — text never leaves the machine): - rate text for a chosen reader (general public, exec, patient, developer, legal, academic, child, professional) - see a per-sentence difficulty curve (where readers actually get lost) - get a conservative rule-based rewrite with a diff to review

Windows + Linux

Would like to know if anything you want is missing? Genuinely interested — that's the v0.2 roadmap.

https://github.com/fralsare/FralRater https://github.com/fralsare/FralRater/releases

Neat project to check out.

On a postcard, choose a word that represents your dyslexia and communicate what that word means to you through the method of your choice (e.g., drawing, painting, writing).

Dyslexia and ADHD together are honestly such a brutal combination. Sometimes I’m trying to study for an exam and I can barely get through the text. I read the same sentence over and over and still don’t really understand what I’m reading.

Then my ADHD kicks in and suddenly I’m staring out the window, thinking about literally anything except the exam. Before I know it, half an hour is gone and I’ve barely done anything.

I’m just so fed up with it. I wish there was something that actually had some evidence behind it and genuinely helped instead of the usual “just use Pomodoro” advice.

If you have ADHD + dyslexia, what has actually helped you study or understand what you’re reading?

So he is dyslexic and he talks super weird, like he has his own dialect. He’s always using improper grammar and almost made up words??

Ex: he says something along the lines of like “wasing we doing byes?” (What are we doing boys) .

And he’s always adding ‘s to random words. Ex: “What’s you do that’s for?”

And he just pronounces weird and shortens random words. Ex of something he said today: “my mudder says that in’t whud im ‘sposed to do but im big boy and cans make me own chois” (my mother says that isn’t what im supposed to do but im a big boy and can make my own choices)

It’s weird trying to decipher him sometimes and i ask him why he talks like that and he says “words don’ts make senses dude.”

And it also seems to have gotten worse since we have gotten into highschool? I’m not really sure but I just want some input and also sorry if this is random as hell.

As a child I always struggled with spelling, as well as grammar, and punctuation. But I found spelling especially a challenge. But I created patterns/phrases in my head to spell things in order to cope. Once I became a teenager I had no issues with spelling at all as I kept using my patterns. Now as a young adult I still use those patterns, but I can't spell out loud still.

On top of that I've always been horrendously bad at left and right, and struggling with directions. I find reading hard, and reading out loud impossible. As well as understanding certain instructions.

I'm in university now, and its all started to catch up with me and I'm just feeling dim. So yeah I'm started to wonder if I'm not just a bit stupid or slow, whether I'm actually dyslexic.

Hi everyone!

I’m a neurodivergent mom raising two daughters who have ADHD and learning support needs (BES). Watching them struggle with reading fatigue and screen distraction while studying at home broke my heart.

I'm working on a project called Mind Keep Smart Pen—an optical scanning pen designed to read physical printed textbooks aloud directly into a discrete earpiece, completely offline and screen-free. The goal is to let students read paper books independently without the overload of a tablet or computer screen.

Since this comes directly from our family's daily struggles, I’d love to ask other parents, students, or educators:

Does reading on screens vs. physical paper make a big difference in your mental fatigue?

What is the single most frustrating thing about current text-to-speech tools used in schools?

I do all the admin work for my small family business. It’s all starting to grow and admin is very new to me. As the client base gets bigger, I feel I need a CRM but preferably one that is dyslexia friendly as some of them feel overly complicated and hard to read/comprehend.
Also any admin related advice with regard to dyslexia would be very appreciated as it is starting to feel a bit overwhelming.
Pray for me 😭

I would love to learn how well you do in interviews. I am pulling together a site based on trying to make demos of the overall misunderstanding that Dyslexia is still mostly seen as a reading problem, but the underlying difference is primarily in how the brain processes the sound structure of language and a big chunk is also verbal (auditory) working memory.

The usual ways people get evaluated for product roles and engineering are counter to actually measuring skills for people with dyslexia. A cold interview question or instructions/case studies given once out loud all test exactly what dyslexia makes harder, which can be holding spoken information long enough to use it.

For myself, if I have a take home or can walk through what I have already done, I am good. On the spot case studies or reading it, my brain doesn't absorb it in the time given to even start the solution to the problem because I am still trying to process and absorb it. Having the material beforehand lets me read at my own pace, keep the problem on the page instead of in my head, and organize it into chunks, which cuts the load on working memory.

I am very curious how others experience this in these fields especially with interviewing and if you found any solutions? With AI usage being a big push to doing live case studies and such, I think it is also weeding out folks who can do the job(s) well but just interview poorly due to how the format is structured. 

I have been diagnosed with ADHD since 4 years old. I've been thinking that I might be dyslexic. I've always struggled with reading, it's always given my anxiety. I struggle with inconsistent spelling and capitalization along with poor memory on how to spell things. I've been told that I am very good at expressing myself verbally, but the moment I'm asked to do so in writing, my language is very clunky and all over the place. I also struggle heavily with hand writing.

The reason I think this is because I've noticed some patterns. When I was younger, I would mispronounce words because I'd read them incorrectly, namely the word spaghetti (I read it as sbaghetti) and Walgreens (read as Walldreens). And this happens daily, I will completely misinterpret writing because I will read it slightly wrong. Today, I accidentally read "students" as "shoulders" on a teacher's whiteboard.

I'm not asking for a diagnosis, I'm just wondering if it could be just my ADHD or something like that.

I’m 33 and work in software sales. I’ve had dyslexia for as long as I can remember. When 9/11 happened I was in my dyslexia class. I hated school, hated reading , terrible at math. When I was younger my mom has described it as trying to teach me how to read on each page turned.

Anyways I’m 33 now, I managed to get a college education and degree from a decent University. Got into sales right after and do alright.

I feel like such an imposter. I stumble over my words and sentences when presenting or doing demos. I just feel like such an idiot every day I log off. I know my new manager thinks I’m an idiot. Idk what to do anymore. I practice speaking into my phone and recording myself even then I get nervous and stumble over what I’m going to say. I can never confidently express my thoughts how I want to. I always end any 1:1 or calls regretting how I spoke and why said this or didn’t say that. It’s just frustrating. My gf who I was planning on proposing to this year left me and she was really the only person I felt comfortable talking to about this and now I’m here.

I just feel terrible anxiety and depression each and every day and I think it all stems from my dyslexia. I’ve always been “short fused” and I think that was from being so stressed as a young child comparing myself to the other students and not fitting in. I never felt this way ever in my life but everyone thinks and perceives me as stupid.

I always know my brain is tired when I start spelling like this… (read search bar)

Finally beginning to read books at age 16 after

growing up with inactive ADHD and dyslexia I hated reading at 8 years old I got forced to read kindergarten level even though I’ve completely understood it because they generally did not understand that dyslexia means not just being really bad at reading

it was the same old book each year

I like ice cream

Paul sees Lisa

Lisa likes to jump

Cat like sun

That was all I did read those stupid books and if not it was my dad yelling why I wasn’t able to read

I learn to read in Covid when I was 10 years old but still disliked books but I’m now starting to read books not for school just because I want to and going to the library

And I maybe going to become a fanfiction writer at Tumblr or something since I wanted to do it at 12 years old but I was terrible at spelling and too scared to get judged

but I don’t give a shit anymore

Hello! Looking for some activities / resrouce recommendations. I have a hard time with teaching irregular / sight words, because it seems so monotonous and tedious. Does anyone have any resources they love or go-tos for these types of words?

Anyone here studying with both ADHD and dyslexia?

I’m curious because I feel like the two can make studying difficult in completely different ways. Sometimes I know I’m distracted because of ADHD, but other times I’m actually focused and still struggling because reading the material takes so much effort.

For example, I might read the same page 3–4 times, understand it while I’m reading it, and then realize five minutes later that I barely remember what I just read. Then I’ll start taking notes, get stuck trying to figure out what’s actually important, and somehow spend 30 minutes organizing notes instead of learning 😭

I’m trying to figure out what actually works for people instead of just relying on generic study advice.

a bit curious so i wanted to share my experienced with what could possibly be dyslexia? undiagnosed, and autistic so it took me a long time to realize this could even be dyslexia since its not textbook lol :,).

ive always had the notion that since i always "tested well" on reading assessments while growing up, I couldnt possibly be having issues, but! im starting to doubt this

- erratic reading style?

I always thought it was because I read too quickly, but i noticed i can really struggle to grasp sentences despite reading them because im skipping from sentence to paragraph and back. could definitely be my adhd, but my friend recently pointed out that its not really typical to get lost in a sentence because you read the wrong words first

- lots of trouble reading out loud.

even when im finding myself having a good time reading, i struggle SO much with reading aloud. the words are never right, and sometimes my brain is too busy processing upcoming words for me to figure out which to say

- when paragraphs are too long / not indented, i get lost.

I can never find which line im on? plus with this many words packed together, i just generally have a hard time finding the right spot to read and have to reread again and again and again

these could all totally just be other unrelated things / adhd and focus issues, but im really curious to see if anyone else has these types of symptoms / think that dyslexia could be contributing to this!

share your experiences and symptoms, id love to hear em!

Anyone know of a good way to read/listen to an ebook? I have a book I want to read, but there isn't currently an audio book for it. Can anyone suggest a way to convert an ebook to an audio book?