Comments on: More On Dyslexia

By: Black Widow

Black Widow — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 00:36:27 +0000

Screen Tinter sounds like an excellent tool and certainly should be far easier to use than trying to build a local user style sheet by hand.

By: Charlie Danger

Charlie Danger — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 20:46:07 +0000

I work with higher education students with dyslexia. Many of these service users have found benefit with Screen Tinter Lite - a free program that changes the windows colours. Usually they use it to reduce the contrast but some of my students prefer higher contrasts, although sometimes using a colour scheme other than black and white.

The program affects documents and windows explorer windows immediately but Firefox & Internet Explorer will need a setting changed so that they ignore the colours specified in the authors’ style sheets.

Further information can be found on my site:
Screen Tinter Lite and Custom Internet Explorer Colour Schemes

By: Black Widow

Black Widow — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 14:01:03 +0000

Like anyone else, I’m sure dyslexics would have problems reading in very bright light, such as strong sunlight. I’m not aware of any research on room lighting, though. Perhaps because a more effective approach is for dyslexics, who do suffer from Scoptic Sensitivity, to wear tinted glasses. Glasses can then be coloured according to the needs of the individual.

Tinted transparent overlays can also be used - both as a solution in themselves or to allow people to experiment with different colours and brightness prior to ordering glasses.

When using a computer monitor, a lower than normal brightness and/or contrast setting would probably help. The monitor gamma settings may also be adjustable and allow the user to ‘tint’ the screen green or blue as appropriate.

With regards to web surfing, those who are slightly more technically minded might be able to set up local style sheets to ease the problems on some sites. There’s a small selection of very simple local style sheets on the Imp’s Internet Guide that might help. These can be used in Internet Explorer and Firefox but dyslexics might find Opera is even better as it offers greater user configuration.

By: Caroline

Caroline — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 12:18:56 +0000

You have covered many questions about text colour and layout however what about room colour and lighting would any colour inperticuler benifit people with dyslexia.