Dyslexia Awareness Week 2025, themed “Raising the Volume,” calls for amplifying dyslexic voices across schools, homes, workplaces, and communities. It’s more than an awareness event, it’s a commitment to inclusion, empowerment, and lasting change. This week invites everyone to reflect, spotlight challenges, celebrate strengths, and renew their commitment to understanding and action.
Dyslexia affects how the brain processes language, not intelligence. The British Dyslexia Association estimates that one in ten people are dyslexic. Despite progress, stigma and misconceptions persist. Many individuals feel pressure to hide their challenges, fearing they’ll be seen as lazy or less capable. With the right support, however, dyslexic people thrive, demonstrating creativity, pattern recognition, big-picture thinking, problem-solving, and resilience.
Experts remind us that dyslexia represents a powerful cognitive style, not a deficit. Systems should adapt to the learner, not the other way around. This shift from a “deficit model” to a strengths-based approach means ensuring dyslexic voices shape decisions in education, technology, and policy.
At Sensory Readable, we’ve supported dyslexic students and individuals for over two decades through assistive technology and inclusive design. Our mission goes beyond a single week of awareness, it’s about sustained advocacy, innovation, and the daily work of listening, learning, and enabling access.
We see Dyslexia Awareness Week as a springboard, not a finish line. Awareness is only the beginning; lasting change happens when inclusive thinking becomes embedded in everyday practice. That includes ensuring assistive tools are accessible year-round, listening to dyslexic users, advocating for equitable funding, and keeping accessibility at the heart of design.
Assistive technology (AT) plays a key role in levelling the playing field. It’s not about “fixing” dyslexia, but about empowering individuals to express ideas and creativity without unnecessary barriers. The most effective tools are person-centred, intuitive, and seamlessly integrated into learning and work environments. They promote independence, build confidence, and help individuals focus on their strengths rather than their struggles.
Emerging innovations, including AI-supported tools such as Sensory Writeable, continue to expand equitable access. With continued research and development, these technologies can make inclusion a lived reality rather than an aspiration.
In education, inclusion begins with everyday actions:
- Auditing access to assistive tools like text-to-speech, dictation, and planning software.
- Embedding technology into the curriculum rather than treating it as an “extra.”
- Training staff in inclusive design and co-creating learning experiences with dyslexic students.
- Allowing students to demonstrate knowledge through video, visuals, or voice recordings, not just written text.
- Reducing cognitive load through clear outlines, chunked instructions, and additional processing time when needed.
Celebrating dyslexic stories and giving students space to lead conversations transforms understanding and strengthens a culture of empathy and respect.
The same principles apply beyond the classroom. Leaders and allies in workplaces can drive systemic change by:
- Advocating for equitable access and funding for assistive technology.
- Embedding year-round awareness efforts through training and communication.
- Ensuring dyslexic voices are represented in leadership and advisory roles.
- Adopting inclusive practices that value creativity, problem-solving, and storytelling.
When inclusion is part of organisational culture, everyone benefits; productivity, innovation, and wellbeing all rise.
At Sensory App House, we’ve spent over two decades supporting students and individuals through assistive technology and inclusive design. Our work goes far beyond a single week of awareness, it’s about sustaining innovation and the daily commitment to listening, learning, exploring, and enabling access.
Our Sensory Readable tool is one example of this ongoing work. Designed to support individuals who experience reading challenges, it provides a way to listen to text when human audio isn’t available. While no single tool can address every need, we believe in offering practical options that tutors and learners can explore and deploy when helpful. We can’t design software exclusively for dyslexic students, but by using speech technology to read text aloud and assist with writing to reduce spelling barriers, such tools may make a real difference. Ultimately, our goal is to create assistive technologies, software, and apps that might help individuals who face challenges with reading, writing, or communication, wherever they are on their journey.