Less Chatter, More Matter: The Communications Podcast

#140 Dyslexia Awareness Month and how to make your comms accessible (ft. Julie Mavlian)

• Mel Loy • Season 1 • Episode 140

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What does it really mean to communicate inclusively and are we doing enough to make our messages accessible to everyone?

In this episode of Less Chatter, More Matter, we speak with Julie Malvian, co-founder of Code Read Dyslexia Network, Assistant Principal, and long-time advocate for children and adults with learning differences. Julie shares what dyslexia is (and what it’s not), how to spot the early signs, and why it’s often misunderstood; even in workplaces that pride themselves on inclusion. 

She also breaks down practical ways communicators and leaders can make information easier to absorb, from using clear language and fonts to creating content in multiple formats. Whether you’re a professional communicator, a leader, or simply someone who wants to connect more effectively, this conversation is a reminder that good communication is inclusive communication and small changes can make a big difference.

Tune in this Dyslexia Awareness Month to learn how rethinking the way you write, design, and speak can help everyone feel more included and understood.

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When I say the names Mohammed Ali, Richard Branson, Erin Brockovich, Kiera Knightley, Albert Einstein, and Cher. What are your first thoughts? Maybe that the one thing that is so common between all of them is that they're super successful in their own fields, they're famous, et cetera, et cetera. But there's one other common trait that they all share. All these people have or had dyslexia, and it is much more common than you might think. In fact, some stats say that as many as one in 10 people have dyslexia, which means that one in 10 of your audience is likely to have dyslexia, which of course means that when communicating, we need to think more carefully about how we do that. And given this is Dyslexia Awareness month, it's an ideal time to delve into what dyslexia actually is and how we can communicate more effectively to ensure those with it have equitable opportunity to process our messages. Which is why on this week's episode, I've interviewed Julie Malvian, who is one of the founders of Code Read Dyslexia Network. Julie is a mother of children with learning difficulties as well as an assistant principal in a New South Wales primary school who is dedicated to helping students with learning difficulties, as well as helping their parents and teachers. She has been developing and refining her teaching practice over more than three decades, seeking out all opportunities to participate in and to facilitate professional learning. Julie is the founder and administrator of Dyslexia Support Australia Group with over 26,000 parent and teacher members, and she's a founding member of Code Read Australia Dyslexia Network who advocate for all people with dyslexia. Julie as a member of the Five From Five Project team has been instrumental to what has been a groundbreaking and innovative approach to influencing policy and practice, providing free, accessible information and resources based on the science of reading to parents and teachers, and using media and social media, as well as direct engagement with politicians and senior education officials to bring about change in policy. In this episode, Julie shares just some of her massive wealth of information about what exactly dyslexia is and how it shows up differently at different ages. Some of the common myths about dyslexia and how as communicators, we can make little changes that will make a big difference, not just for people with dyslexia, but for everyone. It is a fascinating conversation, and I think you'll get so much out of it just like I did. So without further ado. Here's Julie. Julie, welcome to Less Chatter, More Matter. Thanks for having me. So before we get started into sort of the depths of today's episode, let's start with you. Who are you, how did you come to develop your expertise in this space? Firstly, I'm a teacher. I've always been a teacher since I left school. I've enjoyed the job immensely. Then I became a mother to four children. And they have learning difficulties in varying degrees and a bit of neurodiversity in our household too. I guess I... Started really looking seriously at reading space when my first son struggled to learn to read at school. So those reading difficulties manifested quite early. And me being a teacher, I thought, there's no drama. I can teach him how to read. This is not a problem. But he really struggled for quite some time and I knew I had to do more. I threw everything that I knew at him from my own teaching degree to no avail. I also in the process fell for a lot of snake oil treatments out of desperation to try and help him too. And I went on a massive learning curve to fill that gap in my training. So not just for teaching students with difficulties, but in teaching reading in general. So teachers for more than 30 years have pretty much been shortchanged in their undergrad degrees. But that's probably a whole other podcast. You Yes. Yeah. I went on every course, I did everything I could about learning to read. Put myself through a master's degree in special ed as well. And more than a decade ago, I started Dyslexia Support Australia Facebook group that's got about 26,000 people in it now. Oh, wow. That's a closed group where parents could really have honest discussions about reading difficulties. I wanted that to be a safe space for parents, and I wanted parents to understand the deficits in teacher training. I didn't want it to turn into a, a teacher bashing site. I'm a teacher. I know how difficult it is to teach reading. I know we weren't trained properly. And I also wanted parents to avoid falling into the same traps that I did. All the snake oil of which I was fairly avid consumer. I must admit. Then I found my tribe in those Facebook groups. Lots of like-minded advocates and I met the most incredible people in this space. And then this led us to form the not-for-profit organisation Code Read Dyslexia Network. So Code Read is, an organisation that aims to empower people with dyslexia to understand what it is and what they can do about it. It also means that we advocate for issues surrounding dyslexia, and it brings us into contact with politicians and policy makers to help bring about change for people in schools, but also in the workplace. Through all of that experience, I also worked with Dr. Jennifer Buckingham on the five from five project. And the five from five project was developed I suppose with the objective of promoting what we needed to do more of in schools, which is evidence-based reading instruction. And it also gave free resources to teachers, principals, parents. And we also did some advocating again for evidence-based policy five from fives. Really an important, conduit to ensure research is reaching teachers in a very positive and user friendly way because teachers are busy. It's really hard to, yeah. To, take a piece of research and pick out the quality. Is it good, is it not good quality? Where can we go? What can we do? So that's, yeah, and that's one of the things I love about the website. Obviously I was looking through it. In preparation for this interview, and there's so many practical resources on there, it's just a treasure trove for, whether you are a teacher or a parent or somebody who works for somebody who has dyslexia. There's something in there for everybody and it's, I really love the way you've made it so simple to understand because one of my big gripes with any... Research, especially academic research, is how convoluted they make it in those papers you read that, you're like, this isn't English. Yeah it's really what does this mean to cut through a paper and what's really good research and what's not, and how can what that research paper is saying actually be applied in the classroom or if you're going to help somebody with a reading difficulty. So Yeah. Love it. You've done amazing work, Julie, but let's go back to basics a bit here. Firstly, for somebody who may not know what is dyslexia? Yeah. Dyslexia is a pretty much a lifelong learning disorder that particularly affects things like reading and spelling. It can also cause problems with writing and maths as well. It's not exactly how many people have it. It depends on whose work you're looking at. Expert opinions can vary widely. And estimates of the rate of dyslexia range from about four or 5% right through to about 20%. So it depends on who who, which organisation you're speaking to. So people don't outgrow dyslexia. It's common in adults. Adults can sometimes learn to compensate. But it lifelong doesn't mean that people have the same difficulties also throughout life because it affects reading. Some people think dyslexia is a problem with vision. It's not, and I'll talk a little bit more about that later. Dyslexia is really more of a problem with language processing. So reading starts with being able to recognise and work with the sounds of spoken language. We call it phonological, phonemic awareness. And dyslexia doesn't look the same in all people. So there are many aspects to reading. Reading is one of the most complicated things you can do, and there are so many parts to it that can go wrong. Or that you can struggle with. So the difficulties in those can vary with degree as well. So it's a little bit complicated to tease out for some people sometimes. Yeah, I can understand. And I've also, I'm aware of Dyscalculia and dysgraphia as well. Can you tell us a little bit about those, just what the differences are, maybe? Dyscalculia is really difficulties with maths. Being able to subotise and understand numbers and quantities and to be able to work with numbers. Working memory difficulties are also common in people with learning diff, learning difficulties. The working memory can impact on reading, it can impact on comprehension, it can also impact on calculations.'cause you often have to hold several parts of a calculation or pieces of information in your brain at once. And if your working memory is challenged maths is going to be difficult for you too. Same with dysgraphia difficulties with writing. Not only the physical act of handwriting, but being able to. Construct a paragraph and an idea, because often what you're doing is you're holding onto several pieces of information at once while you're trying to write it and then, oh, what am I'm writing this sentence. I've forgotten what my idea was. And then, the orders and sequencing of things too can be problematic with dysgraphia. Yeah. Okay. That's really good. Thank you for sharing more about that.'cause they are terms, I think people hear every now and then, but don't really understand the difference. Yes. Yeah. So how is dyslexia typically diagnosed? To get an actual formal diagnosis, it's diagnosed according to what we call the DSM five. The DSM five is a manual that's used by psychologists. It has all sorts of, issues difficulties in that manual. So they have to use that. It should really be done by an educational psychologist. There's now the DSM five tr, which is a text revision of the the dsm. That sort of clarifies a few more things and have pointed out a few more things that I think people need to understand. A diagnosis can be lengthy to, for parents to try and get a diagnosis for their child. They often have to go on really long waiting lists to see a psychologist. However, we shouldn't wait for a diagnosis before offering assistance. The path to diagnosis can also be incredibly costly. And if we don't start offering assistance as soon as the child struggles, we'll waste that valuable time and we can be helping a child. It's really widely known in reading circles that intervention is certainly most effective when it's done early. And I'm talking, year one, year two, you don't wanna leave it very late. There are ways to to determine if a child is struggling early and offer that help. And I think you have to offer help really early because children become very painfully aware that they're not keeping up with their peers. And they can do that really quite young, even at the end of kindy and early year one. My son used to come home after school sometimes, and I would find him hiding in his room, wrapped in a blanket, calling himself dumb and stupid. And nobody's told him that. That's just the conclusion that he's made because he's not picking it up as quickly as his peers. So school refusal can start very early as well. If they're not having a great time, they don't feel very successful. They often put the brakes on and don't want to go. And if parents give into that, then the child's missed more school. They miss more important information and it causes a really vicious a vicious cycle. You and I both know there are, adults that have slipped through because haven't been diagnosed for whatever reason, and they're now in their forties and fifties, they're in the workplace. What kind of signs might they pick up on to think, oh, maybe this is something I should look into. I think most people as an adult to have always had an inkling that something's not been quite right. They don't feel like they've ever been a very good reader or a very good speller or they know that they've probably struggled academically, and I think that. A really important thing for people to take notice of. Absolutely. And getting back to the diagnosis thing I was talking about how I don't think diagnosis is not important in the younger grades, but as people get older I think it is important because when you hit high school. If you want accommodations for your final exams, in New South Wales we call 'em the HSC, it's called various things in other states. But if you want to have accommodations for those exams, you have to have proved that you have struggled well and truly before these exams. A history of those accommodations being provided to you before that exam is very helpful to be able to make sure that you have those for that final part of schooling. Signs in the preschool years can be quite different to those in the adult years. Preschool students can sometimes struggle with doing things like rhyme. They don't seem to be able to play with the sounds of language the same way that other students can. They might have difficulty learning concepts such as colours and numbers. They might have difficulty following multi-part instructions. And again, there's your working memory coming into it. Oh, and speech sounds, students or children who have... Speech sound difficulty. If their speech is largely unintelligible by about the age of five and a half, they're going, they're probably going to have reading difficulties. If they've got speech difficulties even articulation difficulties. That can also bring difficulties with reading and spelling, because in order to spell, you have to think about a word. You've gotta break it up into it sounds, and if you're not able to say those sounds correctly, you're gonna have difficulty writing them. So in the primary school years, again, we might have some similar things, but when they start to put pen to paper, they really struggle to link a sound to a particular letter. That's sometimes a bit of a, an issue. Again, difficulties following instructions for primary school students. And another red flag is a family member with dyslexia.'cause dyslexia is highly heritable. So it's really important that we think about that. When we are trying to look at a child's profile; but in the high school and adult years. It will often manifest itself in very slow, very labored reading. It takes a lot of effort to get through the word and to understand the text. Anxiety can start to, to take hold as well. Late primary and in high school years too. It takes a lot more time for people with dyslexia to read through the lengthy written materials that they're given in high school. The older you get, the more lengthy the text is and it will take you a long time to get through that. They may also struggle to remember names, dates, organisation can be a bit of an issue for some people. They'll often avoid reading for pleasure. They're not people who will just go and pick up a book and get lost in it for hours. They might struggle to fill out forms, application forms. Yeah, so there's it is quite different as the years progress. Yeah. That's interesting. I had no idea about that, those different signs. So thank you for sharing that. And it does, some of the symptoms you were talking about as an... Adult. So I'm diagnosed with A DHD and some of that stuff is very similar in terms of working memory. Yes. Yes. In getting, being disorganised, all those sorts of things. Yeah. As well. Yeah. There is a high comorbidity between people with dyslexia and A DHD. You can have ADHD without dyslexia and you can say, oh, yes, yeah, have dyslexia without ADHD. But it's not uncommon for the two to come together. Yeah, very interesting. And I've seen a few cases of that actually. So that's all the sort of the facts. What are some of the myths, the common myths about dyslexia? There are a lot. One common myth which concerns me about getting children help is that you have to wait for the age of eight for to get a diagnosis - that is incorrect. That's a common myth that's out there, and that just wastes valuable instructional time. And just if as soon as a child's struggling, you really need to give them some help. So one of the most pervasive myths is that dyslexia, because it's associated with reading, is a visual processing issue. And of course if you're struggling with reading or spelling, you must get your eyes and your ears checked. You've got a hearing problem that can give you all sorts of issues. So get those things checked. But the visual processing problem belief has really been perpetuated by the belief that reading difficulties can somehow be resolved by giving people coloured lenses or coloured paper. It's a very seductive solution because it's so simple. It's a silver bullet, right? Wouldn't we all just like to put on a pair of glasses or get some coloured paper? Life's wonderful, everything. It is big business and unfortunately there's no valid research to support that belief.. Another myth is that dyslexia is somehow related to intelligence. It's absolutely not. You can have people with very high IQs. That struggle to learn to read and spell. I once taught a student with an IQ of 145. That's Mensa material.. But she really struggled with issues of reading and particularly issues with spelling as well. And another myth that I think is an important myth that needs to be addressed is that dyslexia is caused by not reading to children enough when they're younger. Nothing could be further from the truth. This was something that was thrown at me by... Fellow teachers, "oh you didn't read to him enough." They told me. But I read so many books to him as a preschooler. I'm sure his ears were just about bleeding every night, but he would request more and more stories, so that didn't work. It's a overly simple solution, a very complex problem. Another myth that I think is important to address too, which is widely circulated, is that people with dyslexia have special talent. Dyslexia actually exists across the full range of spectrum of human talent. And I think it's quite dangerous to tell people that because they have dyslexia, that they somehow have some sort of superpower. I'm sure people with dyslexia don't see it as a superpower when they're struggling through school. That's for sure. And what makes the difference really between someone who is very successful and someone who is not successful is often the really supportive individual that they may have in their life. And it only takes one person. It might be their parent or it might be a teacher. And that's the sort of person who can help them navigate through the difficulties of dyslexia to help them understand what dyslexia is, what it isn't, and how they can work around it. Thank you for sharing those. Now, a lot of people who listeners podcasts there communicators, team leaders, they are change managers, project managers. They work in sort of corporate settings and so we're using a lot of... Written communication, like emails and internet articles and those, chat messages like teams and those sorts of things. What are some of the core challenges that people with dyslexia face when they're processing or trying to read communications sent through those sorts of channels, like email and et cetera? Yeah, written communications can be a real problem because it, it takes someone with dyslexia a lot more time and a lot more mental energy, to get through the information and particularly if that information is a lengthy email or they've gotta read a report or anything like that you can fatigue, you often need to take breaks. So it, it does take a lot of significant time and energy. Those slower reading speeds and reduced comprehension can sometimes make it harder to grasp the main points of longer text. So you know that working memory, that cognitive load can be mentally draining. And they can often feel quite tired after reading. So they might need to take breaks, even if it's just for short periods. Sometimes difficulty organising thoughts can make it harder when they're trying to then respond back to emails as well. And then there's the anxiety that can come along with the stress and the effort involved in those challenges of trying to put together a coherent response. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So let's focus on those written materials. As communications professionals or leaders in a business, what could we do differently to improve that readability of all the comms? We often send out communication from a CEO to the entire organisation. Those sorts of things. What could we do that would potentially help people who do have dyslexia, given the high rate of it, as we've talked about? I think one of the important things is to use really simple, clear language. Don't use more words than you need to, avoid jargon and very complex sentence structures where possible. Break up the text when you're presenting text on a page. Don't make a large, solid lump of text that's very hard to wade through. Break it up. Put them in lots of simple bullet. Even using bullet points can be good. Short paragraphs, plenty of spaces between large blocks of text. Now you can also choose dyslexia friendly fonts, but I wanna be really clear here, there is a particular font that people think is going to help people with dyslexia. But there's been some research around this font. You don't need to use the dyslexia font. You can use a plain sans serif font, like a Arial or Comic Sans or something like that. You don't need to actually use that special font. Research was done by an Australian researcher, called Eva Marinus and that actually showed that the efficacy of the font was due to the particular spacing. And not the actual shape of the font itself. And you can actually achieve the spacings for any font by adjusting your settings through your word processing program, like Microsoft Word. And also limit the use of italics. As well as they can sometimes distort the letters too. If you're going to use communications, I think headings are a really good thing to do. I think it allows for easier scanning. And it also helps with screen reading too, I believe. So those sorts of things that can be quite helpful. Yeah, it does strike me that. There are things that would be helpful for anybody who's reading. It's, and I have heard it said, there's a friend of mine who her specialty is accessible communication. She said, the thing that people don't often realise is that by making communication more accessible, you make it better for everybody. So visual comms is something we also talk a lot about on this show and just in my own consultancy as well, because typically our brains do process visuals very quickly, much more quickly than words. And that's just... Part of evolution, right? We didn't read and write until really a few decades ago, if that, so our brains were wired for more visuals. How could we be using them better to help with comprehension for people with dyslexia? What are some of the best practices for using visuals? Yeah, I think absolutely agree. Those visual supports aid communication for everybody, not just people with dyslexia, but they're especially useful for people with dyslexia. Because quite often people with dyslexia can have underlying language disorders as well. So those language and communication needs, those alternative methods of communication can be quite helpful. Visuals do provide that structure and that routine, they help improve understanding. And if you're looking at something and taking that information visually, you can often get the concept much more quickly than reading through a very dense paragraph. So I think they help to improve understanding and to avoid frustration and make things more inclusive really for people with reading difficulties and language difficulties. And I think too, one of the things I sometimes see is people try and create something visual. Like with the best of intentions, but then they still stack a lot of words in the visual. Yes. They create an infographic and it's just as many words, it's just now got some icons dotted throughout it. Yes. Yeah. You've gotta keep the language very simple and use less if you're going to, make a visual. Absolutely. Take the words away. That's the difficulty. So make them very simple, very clear. In order for them to be effective. And now not all communication is written. Obviously, in a workplace you go to team meetings, you have one-on-ones with your manager, you go to town halls, all those sorts of things. So how could leaders adapt their verbal communication presentation styles to be a bit more dyslexia friendly, I think it's important to make use of those forms of communication that are not always written visual presentations, but as we just discussed, don't make them too wordy either. Make use of those visuals and diagrams whenever possible. If something can be done in a diagram, do it in a diagram rather than do it in a, a paragraph. I think anything that allows speech to text and text to speech for the person. That has dyslexia should be utilised. There are lots of programs that you can use and there's certainly far more available now than there ever was, Even when we look back 10 years ago. Some of this stuff used to be very expensive and now it's daily accessible on your phone. I think you can use things like or for the individual with dyslexia, use reading coach. The dictation facilities are really important. There's also some programs that you can get when you are reading that will actually highlight the text as it's reading to you. Which can also be very helpful. There's, oh gosh, there's so many ways. Which does lead me to my next question, which is around, companies you say, especially in hybrid working environments, rely very heavily on those digital tools like teams and SharePoint and apps. And so you've talked a little bit already, but can you maybe expand on how, like, how settings or features of these tools we could be more aware of to use? Yeah. I think some of them are quite complex and I think if you can watch videos in particular on how to use those things and the features, sometimes I think some of these programs have so many features built into them. Yes. It can be difficult too, to use them exactly to your purpose. And not everything is, not everybody wants to use every feature too. So you don't have to use every feature that's in them. So I guess it's finding for the individual what's going to work for them. I think you've also got to think about I guess individualising it for your own purpose. It sounds like, if you were to give advice to a person who, let's say they're a team leader, they've got somebody on their team who said, Hey, I've got dyslexia. The best way to support them is actually to ask them what they need. Absolutely. Yeah. Don't assume, and I think this happens early in education too, we just assume, oh, this person has dyslexia, so we need to do this. I remember going to support a 15-year-old student to be an advocate for them in school, and as soon as I said, oh, she has dyslexia immediately. Oh, that's okay. We'll give her coloured paper. That's not gonna solve the problem. And often they'll think, they'll just assume that because you're dyslexic, this is what you need. As I said it can manifest a little bit differently in people depending on the areas where their difficulties lie. So we should never, ever assume that we know what's going to work. For that person. And so that consultation is just such an important part of the process to know how their dyslexia impacts them and what are the tools that are really genuinely going to help them. Yeah. I love that advice. Thank you for sharing that. Okay. And last formal question, ai, it's everywhere. It's come a really long way in recent times. What ways are you seeing AI being used to support people who have dyslexia? AI is moving so fast. What it can do now is absolutely incredible. The things that AI can do for us is give enhanced reading and comprehension experiences. You can take an incredibly complex. Piece of text and put it into AI and have it reworded and simplified and summarised, which I think is fantastic. That, that makes understanding content way more accessible for people, which is really exciting. You can also say, this is what I wanna write to you, ai. This is what I wanna write. These are the main points that it needs to include and it can put it into a lovely, organised piece of writing for you. It can also help us to, spell check and take out the errors and all of those sorts of things. It can help you to, you can tell AI your thoughts and it can put it down into a co cohesive piece of writing for you, which is great. And AI can also help with, setting reminders and managing daily tasks. But it, it doesn't come without, its challenging challenges. It's not always perfect either, and you have to be able to reread that piece of work that AI has produced and doesn't really say what you need it to say. And is it correct? That is a really good point. A lot of companies are really grappling at the moment with finding that balance between encouraging the use of AI and security just in general. So thank you for reminding us of that. Okay, I have three questions I ask every guest on the podcast. Here's the first one. What is one of the best communication lessons you've ever learned, and how did it change the way you communicate? I guess it's learning to be quiet. My dad, bless him, he's since passed on, used to tell me speech is silver, silence is golden. And although speaking can be valuable, sometimes we've just gotta be quiet and listen and think before we actually, say something. We don't want to be. Doing excessive talking. I guess that true wisdom lies in knowing when to speak and more importantly not to speak. Next question. What is one thing you wish people would do more of or less of when communicating? I suppose, given what I've just said, probably more listening. More listening and without a device in hand really giving up, a hundred percent focus to the person that you were in the room with and engaging with. I think that's really important, and not being in a hurry, slow down. Okay. Last question. Who do you turn to for communication advice and why? Oh gosh. It used to be my mom and my dad, but they're both passed recently. But I guess I just have to take heart in the fact that I was blessed, to have really great parents. It certainly sounds like they were excellent people and you learned a lot from them, so thank you for sharing that. Julie, thank you so much for joining us here today. If people want to get in touch with you, learn more about you and what you do, what's the best way for them to do that? I think they need to go to the Code Read Dyslexia Network website. I am also on, or Twitter, it's not called Twitter anymore. It's called X, which is just. At Julie Mavlian yeah, I think they're the best places to go and if they want more information, there's some great organisations out there SPELD five from Five, Learning Difficulties Australia. There's lots of places that people can go for information, but don't forget Code Read. Brilliant. We'll pop all those links in the show notes for everybody. Julie, thank you for joining us on Less Chatter, More Matter. Thanks for the opportunity. It's been great.