The Diplomat
Yesterday, 8 October, International Dyslexia Day, the Turkish Embassy was lit up in turquoise to support the Unite for Dyslexia campaign. The Day is celebrated to raise awareness of the disorder, which affects 10% of the world’s population, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
One of the most common learning disorders affecting school children is dyslexia. The date has been officially recognised by the European Dyslexia Association, proposed by several associations of families with dyslexia.
Dyslexia is a specific learning disorder of neurobiological and hereditary origin that affects several areas of functioning, such as reading and writing performance, affecting the academic performance of school-aged children and adolescents, as well as work performance in adults.
According to estimated figures, dyslexic children (aged between 7 and 9 years) represent between 3 and 6% of the child population, with more boys than girls presenting this condition.
The curricular content of the current educational system is based on learning through reading, writing and memorisation, generating marked conditions of inequality in children with dyslexia, due to their difficulty in understanding and learning.
The main characteristic features of dyslexia are difficulties in reading and writing fluently and accurately; comprehension difficulties; limited lexis; deficiencies in short-term memory; difficulties in visual tracking and in spatial-temporal notions: confusion between right and left, recognising the days of the week, months, hours; change in the order of letters; difficulties in psychomotor coordination (dyspraxia) and with mathematics (dyscalculia) and poor spelling.
The diagnosis and treatment of dyslexia requires the identification of specific difficulties in each patient with the intervention of a multidisciplinary team, comprising neuropsychologists, ophthalmologists, otorhinolaryngologists, neurologists, speech therapists, paediatricians and behavioural and developmental specialists. It is very important to have family support to reinforce communication, confidence and improve reading and writing skills through the application of specific educational techniques.
