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Following the programme broadcast on Channel 4, Professor Susan Tresman, Chief Executive of the BDA, has issued the following immediate response.
- Dyslexia is primarily an information processing difficulty, neurological in origin and affecting language. It is not just about reading. BDA has made this point from the outset to the producer of the Channel 4 programme.
- Acquiring the skills of reading is often problematical for those with dyslexia alongside a range of other processing skills including organisation, sequencing and retrieval of information, short-term memory, spelling, writing and number.
- Of course BDA welcomes research into improving the acquisition of reading for all children as indeed for all learners.
- However, since dyslexia is not encompassed wholly by reading, acquiring reading does not solve dyslexia or render the term redundant or place it in the realms of an ‘emotional construct’.
- The majority of the six million dyslexics in the UK will have acquired the skills of reading: they remain dyslexic, and are entitled to receive recognition and support as enshrined in the Disability Discrimination Act and Disabled Student’s Allowance for Higher Education.
Susan Tresman
Chief Executive
British Dyslexia Association
8 September 2005
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