Dyspraxia in adults: how software can offer support in the workplace
Discover how our inclusive technology can make an impact for employees with Dyspraxia.
Supporting employees with Dyspraxia
6% of the global adult population have dyspraxia. These individuals are often very creative, good at problem solving, highly motivated, and have a strong sense of empathy, amongst many other brilliant qualities.
Like Chelsie, those of us with Dyspraxia may also experience challenges with physical coordination and working memory.
Chelsie Spencer is a Senior Content Marketing Specialist with Dyspraxia. Chelsie has collaborated with us on the content of this page.
As Chelsie explains, these challenges can lead to:
- Difficulty with typing, which can impact spelling
- Disruption in the flow of thoughts, as well as information processing
- Forgetfulness
- Lack of confidence
There are many ways the working environment can be made inclusive of different forms of neurodiversity, including dyspraxia. This includes:
- Recording video meetings
- Providing meeting notes after in-person meetings
- Providing briefing documents for all projects and tasks
- Making it easier for individuals to process information. We can do this by providing bullet points which highlight key information in documents. As well as giving people the opportunity to take time to process information before requiring a response from them
Inclusive technology is also an incredibly powerful tool.
Below, we highlight how our technology can benefit individuals with Dyspraxia.
How can employees with dyspraxia benefit from inclusive technology?
Inclusive technology allows more flexibility in a digital workplace. It can also help to reduce a lot of the challenges that people with dyspraxia might experience at work.
For example with our software, Read&Write for Work, we can:
- Choose to dictate information rather than type. For those of us with dyspraxia, this can support challenges with physical coordination. It also helps us to put our thoughts down much quicker, so we can retain our focus and flow.
- Use predictive text, allowing us to input words with fewer keystrokes
- Use spell checkers and text-to-speech tools to find and remove any typing errors
- Organise information and categorise content for future reference. This can help us to remember key pieces of information from meetings, briefing documents, and beyond
Read&Write’s features support
Working memory & dexterity challenges
As Chelsie shares, physical coordination difficulties can have an impact on her sharing her thoughts in the written format. Combined with working memory challenges, this can lead to great ideas being lost.
Read&Write’s Dictation feature offers an alternative to typing. It converts the spoken word into text, allowing users to input information by speaking. By removing the need to type, it helps those of us with dyspraxia to keep our thoughts flowing.
Watch the video for a quick demo of Dictation.
Other useful features include: Prediction & Voice Note
Accuracy with written work
As Chelsie shared, people with Dyspraxia can often misspell words due to typing errors caused by dexterity challenges.
Read&Write’s Text-to-Speech tool reads written text out loud. Hearing content read out loud can amplify literacy errors. It also helps to reinforce understanding and improves retention of information.
Watch the video for a quick demo of Text-to-Speech.
Other useful features include: Check It & Audio Maker
Decoding content
Individuals with dyspraxia may have difficulty organising their thoughts and the sequence of their language. Similarly, it can take longer to process information and decode content.
Read&Write’s Highlights feature allows us to categorise information using four different colored highlighters. We can highlight text in documents, websites, emails and more. It also allows us to collect our highlights into a separate document. This makes it easier to organise information, and pull out key pieces for later reference.
Watch the video for a quick demo of Highlights.
Focusing on on-screen content
Like Chelsie experiences, having dyspraxia can also make it difficult to focus on certain areas of text, or remembering where you were in a place of text.
Read&Write’s Screen Masking tool tints the whole screen in any chosen color, and provides a reading spotlight. This spotlight allows us to focus on small parts of our screen. It can be tailored by color, size and opacity to suit our needs.
Watch the video for a quick demo of Screen Masking.
Chelsie also uses ReachDeck to make sure her content is inclusive of others. It also gives her a boost of confidence.
What is ReachDeck?
ReachDeck is a set of tools that allows us to make digital content easier to access, understand and use. Part of its toolset is the ReachDeck Editor.
The ReachDeck Editor is an editing tool that highlights grammar, spelling and readability errors as we type. It helps us to write content that’s easy for everyone to understand. That’s because it identifies long sentences, jargon words, and complex language as we type.
ReachDeck supports neuro-inclusion & increases confidence
As a Senior Content Marketing Specialist, the ReachDeck Editor helps Chelsie to write content that’s inclusive of all audiences. This includes those with literacy challenges, processing difficulties, and beyond.
ReachDeck also increases Chelsie’s confidence in her written work. Watch the video to discover how. You’ll also receive a short demo.
The real value of inclusive technology
As we’ve highlighted, inclusive technology helps to reduce the challenges that some people may experience in a digital environment. But the real value is the positive impact it can have on an employee's experience at work.
In this video, Chelsie describes how our software has increased her confidence, empowers her strengths, and provides peace of mind.