Ofer Chermesh: An Adult’s Perspective on Dyslexia (Learning Disabilities, Dyslexia)
http://dyslexia-blog.ghotit.com
Ofer Chermesh is an adult Dyslexic who now works in the area of developing assistive technology for dyslexics. His company is called Ghotit. Ofer’s blog offers information and insights from the perspective of someone living with dyslexia. He shares insights on himself with the hope of helping others and educating those without dyslexia.
Ofer Chermesh and his company, Ghotit
My name is Ofer Chermesh and I am one of Ghotit founders. I have always struggled with writing and reading. When I was 10 years old I was diagnosed as a dyslexic. I have struggled with my dyslexia throughout my life, in school and in different workplaces.
Kids and adults with learning disabilities, like dyslexia, are heavy users of spell checkers. However, standard spell and grammar checkers address the needs of the general population, who demonstrates average spelling. These spell checkers produce low results for users who demonstrate poor English spelling such as people with dyslexia.
For years I have dreamt of an ideal Assistive Technology Solution that would help dyslexics like me both in school and at work. Ghotit is the company that I founded to fulfill that dream. Ghotit offers novel patent-pending context spell checking technology tuned for people with bad spelling. Using these algorithms Ghotit can pick up and correct not only really poorly spelled words but also misused words, words that are spelled correctly, but are written out of context. Ghotit has integrated into its spell checker unique features aimed to radically change the writing experience of bad spellers. Ghotit has integrated a dictionary service so that all suggested words are presented with their meanings. In addition, Ghotit has integrated a text-to-speech service so that the user can make sure that what he wrote is exactly what he intended to communicate.
Ghotit is a dream comes true for me. With Ghotit, I now write confidently, continuing to misspell as I always have, but with the confidence that Ghotit is there with me to review my writing and offer the right corrections.
I hope you will find Ghotit useful to you as it is for me.
Sample Blog Post
http://dyslexia-blog.ghotit.com/2009/08/03/dyslexia-student-exams/
No Ifs or Buts – Dyslexics Deserve Extra Exam Time
Posted by: ghotit on: August 3, 2009
I remember a while back when I was working at a previous workplace, I entered the coffee lounge and heard two work colleagues talking about the injustice of giving students additional exam time. They raised the issue that many students are abusing this “benefit” unjustly. I remember how I impolitely interrupted their conversation stating that what they just said was complete nonsense and explained that denying students with learning disabilities such as dyslexia and dysgraphia extra exam time was simply unjust and reflected the general’s public general ignorance on these topics. They of course lacked the ardor that I demonstrated in this discussion and soon enough retreated back to their offices.
IF only these students would work harder they would not need this extra time?
BUT so many students are abusing this extra time loop hole to get improved testing conditions?
My work colleagues were not malicious, dyslexia-phobic people… they simply were quite ignorant to what people with Reading and Writing disabilities experience and did not have the understanding that providing this extra exam time for people with dyslexia can make a real difference between Success or Failure.
“Just as a diabetic requires insulin, an individual who is hearing impaired requires a hearing aid, a man or woman who is a quadriplegic requires a wheelchair, a person who is dyslexic has a profound physiological need for additional time to complete examinations.” – http://dyslexia.yale.edu/Policy_WhyChange.html
Dyslexia is a physiological condition that people are born with. Special learning techniques, together with hard word and special reading and writing assistive technology can ensure that a dyslexic student succeed in both education and his workplace. However, the fact remains that for most dyslexics Reading and Writing will always be more difficult and time-consuming then non-dyslexics. The objectives of examinations are to test the intelligence and knowledge of the examinee on a specific topic. The objective is not to test the speed at which he reads the questions and writes the answers.
Regarding the claim that there are non-dyslexics that abuse this extra time for exams policy, there are 2 replies that I wish to make:
“Data now demonstrate that it is only students who are dyslexic who benefit from additional time. Thus, such college students increase their scores substantially (e.g., 13th percentile to 76th percentile), while typical readers when given extra time on exams increase their scores few to no points (82nd percentile to 83rd percentile).*” – this is taken from Yale’s University website. This research demonstrates that people who really do not have a real difficulty in Reading and Writing will not gain real benefits with the extra time allocated to exams.
So if everybody cheated in a test, should someone who did not cheat be punished too? The obvious answer is NO. By getting additional exam time, the dyslexic student is simply getting equivalent testing conditions as other students. He is not cheating the system. If other students are supposedly “cheating the system”, then let the system take responsibility to stop this cheating without punishing the ones who deserve this benefit; and the system should do so without making the person with dyslexia feel subconscious about getting the benefit he justifiably deserves…
So was I rude when I interrupted my work colleagues’ conversation and loudly stated their ignorance on this topic, perhaps. But it is time to loudly state the rights of the dyslexic community and to educate the public regarding what is dyslexia and what must be done in order to enable dyslexics to fully and hopefully easily integrate into society… and this definitely includes GETTING EXTRA EXAM TIME.
* M. K. Runyan, The Effects of Extratime. In S. Shaywitz & B. Shaywitz, eds., Attention Deficit Disorder Comes of Age: Toward the 21st Century; Austin, Texas: Pro-Ed, 1992.
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