Dyslexia - a learning disorder that involves difficulty reading due to problems identifying speech sounds and learning how they relate to letters and words (decoding). Also called reading disability, dyslexia affects areas of the brain that process language. 

Around the world, dyslexia affects people, and it affects about 9-12% of the population; 2 – 4% of the population can be seriously affected by it. This means that 1 in 10 people in the world has dyslexia. Imagine a room of 25 people, and approximately 2 of them have dyslexia. According to Google, in 2020, the population of the world was 7.753 billion. Even if we assume that only 9% of the population of the world has dyslexia, that still amounts to 697,770,000, which is approximately 700 million people.

Dyslexia can lead to a number of problems, including:

• Trouble learning. Because reading is a skill basic to most other school subjects, a child with dyslexia is at a disadvantage in most classes and may have trouble keeping up with peers.

• Social problems. Left untreated, dyslexia may lead to low self-esteem, behaviour problems, anxiety, aggression, and withdrawal from friends, parents and teachers.

• Problems as adults. The inability to read and comprehend can prevent a child from reaching his or her potential as the child grows up. This can have long-term educational, social and economic consequences.

Children who have dyslexia are at increased risk of having attention-deficit /hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and vice versa. ADHD can cause difficulty sustaining attention as well as hyperactivity and impulsive behaviour, which can make dyslexia harder to treat.

In our case, we would like to tackle one of the 4 main types of dyslexia, surface dyslexia. Surface dyslexia (also called visual or dyseidetic dyslexia) is a sub-type characterised by difficulty with whole word recognition and spelling. Someone with surface dyslexia can usually master phonics but cannot read words that are spelt differently than they sound (irregular words). Surface dyslexia: The signs, causes, and treatment. Learning Lab. (2020, December 7). This means that they are not able to read, but they are capable of processing words when heard. 

To solve this problem, our program can convert images to speech and read out words for users with the addition of phonics displayed in the UI.  Other than that, we have a flashcard function that has difficult words for dyslexic people with their phonics displayed, thus helping our target audience know how to pronounce the words better. 

Developed by: Wei Sheng, Kyan and Hong Cheng