The fundamental characteristic of Dyslexia, is the inability to recognise words on a page and simultaneously translate them into something of meaning. This is caused by the physical make up of the brain being subtly different and results in problems with reading, spelling and grammar.

	Dyslexia is a life-long condition and is found in all races and across all social classes.
	Many statistics indicate that dyslexia occurs in about 4 in every 100 people.
	It occurs about 4 times more often in males than females. This proportion is similar in other developmental disorders such as Autism, Scotopic Sensitivity.

Origins
It seems that Dyslexic people have brains which have a slightly different structure or put another way the brain is 'wired' differently. This is thought to be genetic in origin. Dyslexia is not a psychological condition (if it were I'm sure it would have been much easier to overcome!) and nor is it caused by bad parenting or social conditioning. Dyslexia is not caused by bad teaching however if teaching is poor then this will obviously exacerbate the problem.

Different languages (writing systems) use different parts of the brain to process the visual notation of speech/sounds, so people with reading difficulties in one language may not have reading problems in another language (with a different orthography). The neurological skills needed to perform reading, writing, and spelling can vary between different languages (writing systems / orthographies) consequently a person may able to learn one language without too much difficulty but struggle with another.

	Difficulty learning to reading and also problems reading fluently.
	Problems spelling
	Copying text from one place to another (eg. copying from the whiteboard/blackboard)
	Difficulty automatically determining left from right and have difficulty recognising the difference between symmetrical things eg. ‘d’ & ‘b’
	Retaining things in the memory for short lengths of time ie. a verbal instruction, a list of numbers, sequence of letters, a shopping list etc.
	Inability to organise thoughts resulting for instance in difficulty remembering to do tasks at a specific time or place. Lack of organisation may make it difficult to do things such as write an essay which has a good structure.
	Poor concentration and need to compensate by trying to learn the art of concentration. This can show itself in many ways from the obvious inability to concentrate during lessons/lectures to more subtle problems such as being unable to concentrate long enough to do perform simple mental arithmetic.
	Sadly many dyslexic people have such a rough time that their self esteem can become badly battered.
	Many have difficulty understanding poetic language.
	Coordination problems can make it hard and sometimes painful or tiring to write and/or play sports etc..
	Some dyslexic people like myself also suffer from Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome which affects their vision (hence reading is more difficult).

Other combinations
Some people suffering from Dyslexia also suffer from Dyspraxia, Asperger Syndrome, Attention Deficit Disorder. All these conditions come under the more general heading of 'Developmental Disorders'. It can be very hard to accurately summarize someone's disability if they suffer from a mixture of several 'Developmental Disorders' say Dyslexia and Dyspraxia - this is due to the inadequate way we try and define/categorise such disabilities.

...written for all the children and adults suffering
from and working with those who
suffer from similar problems...