16 ms·

Dsxyliea

1356 points by geon 11y ago

stegosaurus 11y ago
I'm guessing this is supposed to do something? Expecting the letters to jumble themselves or similar. Doesn't work for me on either Firefox or Chrome desktop.
- mattdotc 11y ago
  Data point 2: Works for me. Do you have any content blockers enabled? Perhaps they're interfering.
  - 91bananas 11y ago
    Same, works here in latest Chrome. GP is JS running?
- robbiet480 11y ago
  That is what's happening for me on Chrome 48 for Mac
- imadeajoke 11y ago
  Do you have dyslexia? Maybe it's just balancing itself out?
  - LyndsySimon 11y ago
    Username checks out.
- geon 11y ago
  Any error messages in your console?
  - ola 11y ago
    You are loading things over HTTP instead of HTTPS (Mixed content warning). Change http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.0.3/jquery.min.js http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.0.3/jquery.mi... => //cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.0.3/jquery.min.js
    - geon 11y ago
      Fixed.
  - stordoff 11y ago
    It could be a HTTPS error - jquery is loaded over HTTP, so blocked on the secure page. Replacing <script type="text/javascript" src="http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.0.3/jquery.min.js"></script> with <script type="text/javascript" src="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.0.3/jquery.min.js"></script> should enable HTTPS as required AFAIK
    - geon 11y ago
      Thanks. Fixed.
      - stordoff 11y ago
        The Disqus.com comments are still blocked on the secure version of the page (disqus.com/embed.js is loaded via HTTP only), but the main functionality works fine now with HTTPS Everywhere enabled.
- stordoff 11y ago
  Do you have HTTPS Everywhere enabled? It tries to load jquery over HTTP, which Chrome blocks on the secure version of the page [1] [1] https://geon.github.io/programming/2016/03/03/dsxyliea https://geon.github.io/programming/2016/03/03/dsxyliea Edit: Console shows: Mixed Content: The page at 'https://geon.github.io/programming/2016/03/03/dsxyliea' https://geon.github.io/programming/2016/03/03/dsxyliea' was loaded over HTTPS, but requested an insecure script 'http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.0.3/jquery.min.js' http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.0.3/jquery.mi.... This request has been blocked; the content must be served over HTTPS.
- stegosaurus 11y ago
  OK, it's decided to work now. Very odd. I had first opened it with NoScript; disabled the blocking; nothing. Tried in Chrome (vanilla install); nothing. Tried a bit later in Chrome: now working.
  - geon 11y ago
    I used a jQuery from Cloudflare. It might have decided to not load the first time.
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  It didn't load for me in Firefox. When it didn't load in Chrome either, I noticed that the script was being loaded from an unsafe source, which both Firefox 46 and Chrome seem to block by default.
- keeguon 11y ago
  I like that this post has now become a post where people trying to debug the whole damn link to have more difficulty reading a webpage with letters jumbling around :P.
krschultz 11y ago
Shameless plug: if you know anyone with Dyslexia or other learn & attention issues, send them to https://www.understood.org https://www.understood.org. It's a non-profit with many free resources for people trying to overcome these challenges.
- mgrennan 11y ago
  Thank you for the link. I'm 60 and have suffered with Dyslexia all my life. I do well today thanks to spelling correction and Audio Books. But it is a struggle. There are "English Nazis" everywhere. I hear thing like "You might get promoted if you would play attention to your spelling." Most of my special Ed friends flip burgers even with 140+ IQs.
  - stordoff 11y ago
    I'm not dyslexic, but I've also experienced a similar attitude towards spelling. It's something I've always struggled with (I tend to think faster than I write, so frequently muddle words together, and words tend to 'look fine' even if I know the correct spelling - writing this I typed 'thinker' instead of 'think faster', and something like 'wierd' wouldn't stand out to me without spell-check). Fortunately it's never held me back, and deson't effect, e.g., reading, but I've definitely encountered people with an attitude along the lines of "You can't spell, therefore are an idiot" which can be fustrating.
    - edgan 11y ago
      I think I have a mild form of dyslexia, and I am the same way. I can type the wrong word correctly, but thought the right word. I can repeatedly swap some words for each other, like it for he, and he for it. Spell checking works very well for me, but if I picked the wrong word it didn't help. I also make many of the classic mistakes like there and their. Also use of apostrophes if I am not careful. I don't think it has seriously held me back, but I think I have begun to notice a more subtle way it has held be back. I am mgrennan's son.
- ntumlin 11y ago
patio11 11y ago
For extra fun, imagine you're reading in a language where the characters look like 紫 and sometimes the lines decide to wiggle like Medusa's hair.
- ALee 11y ago
  posted above, but it's different for Chinese speakers than English people with dyslexia: http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2014/09/dyslexia-chinese http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2014/09/dyslexia-chi...
matthewcford 11y ago
Having dyslexia, I would say this is rather extreme, I can't speak for everyone but reading isn't like this for most dyslexics. Usually it is a pair of letters being swapped, or numbers order reversed. They don't jump around/change randomly, you just misread it. http://dyslexia.learninginfo.org/symptoms.htm http://dyslexia.learninginfo.org/symptoms.htm The new font for dyslexics also goes into this some more: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-font-helps-dyslexics-read/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-font-helps-dys...
- mgrennan 11y ago
  Dysgraphia is a part related to dyslexia. This can be a problem, b d p q 9, W M N, O 0 o e, E 5 S R B and more.
  - thenipper 11y ago
    Did the parent originally talk about dysgraphia? Because while I have pretty serious dysgraphia I'm not really dyslexic. While related they're pretty significantly different. One of my best friends growing up had dyslexia and with my dysgraphia we always joked about being one 'normal' person.
    - mgrennan 11y ago
      No. At age 60, when I was 12 they really didn't have a name for any of this. For years my school records had be as retarded. It was not until I taught myself calculus and trig in the 8th grade that my parent new something was wrong and sent teaching specialists at OU. They a used the word dyslexia. This was all very new in the 60s.
  - geon 11y ago
    I was experimenting with character substitution too, but it won't work well with a variable width font, since the words at the end of the page moves a lot.
    - 11y ago
Alex3917 11y ago
I actually don't have much difficulty reading this, with the exception of a couple technical terms I wasn't familiar with. There was a similar thread a while back with a couple different fun examples, albeit designed to show how we read based on the shape of words (not spelling) rather than to demonstrate dyslexia: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=222459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=222459
- mwcremer 11y ago
  Imagine what it would be like if almost all the words were ones you "weren't familiar with," which is how it would seem if you had dyslexia and were learning to read.
- SamBam 11y ago
  You didn't have trouble reading it, because the author deliberately kept the first and last letters the same, and referred to Typoglycemia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typoglycemia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typoglycemia, which has shown that you can (often, not always) mix up the internal letters and the works are still very legible. In doing this, I think the creator was specifically trying to make a Typoglycemia simulator, not a dyslexia simulator, since the original quote said nothing about the first and last letters remaining the same.
  - geon 11y ago
    You can't really simulate Typoglycemia, since it isn't a condution, but a phenomenon. But yeah. I wanted the effect to be somewhat distracting while still readable.
antilketan 11y ago
I think it would be possible to train a model (and present it as an app for people with Dyslexia) that cancels out the jumping letters. It is kind of like superimposing two waves which has a coherent text, that most of us see, as the product.
- rcthompson 11y ago
  You're making a lot of absurd assumptions here. You're assuming that this demo is a completely literal representation of what dyslexics experience, which is unlikely, and you're assuming that there is some predictable pattern to the shuffling, which there isn't (check the source, it's just randomly choosing words and then randomly shuffling their internal letters).
  - antilketan 11y ago
    It is a thought and has nothing to do with how this particular entity has been implemented. What I got from the post was that dyslexic people see words/letters differently than us. And maybe there is a way to balance that out with deterministic enforced shuffling (edit: don't take shuffling literally). That is why used the word "train". I don't think anyone except a person with dyslexia knows what the "patterns" are, if any. The patterns could be different for every person too.
slg 11y ago
There are a variety of different forms of Dyslexia, so I can't speak for everyone. However, this doesn't resemble my own personal form. I would be curious to hear from other Dyslexics to see if this is anything close to their experience. The way I usually explain my variety is that my brain is trying to read faster than it can physically. I have no problem reading words (which seems to be what this code is focusing on), the problem is my brain is already moving forward and the word I read is often not the word written on the page. Sometime I can make the contextual correction in my head while other times I have to reread the sentence to make any sense of it. In that instance, I can understand the "jumping around" description as I can read a sentence for a second time and suddenly my brain will see a different word than it saw the first time.
- lettergram 11y ago
  I have a genetic condition which makes my corpus callosum (the part of the brain that connects the two halves) small(er). This leads (as described by my doctor) both halves processing data and then having trouble syncing. I don't really know if that's true or not. However, it runs in my family (we have taken genetics tests) and it turns out that's why we are neither right or left handed, and we all have various issues related to spelling, geometry, etc. We also have an increased risk of schizophrenia and alzheimer's, but increased IQ according to studies. For me it manifests itself mostly dyslexia. My brain gumbles words, and I don't realy left to right directly, I pretty much read a sentence and have to put it together in my head. Spelling is awful, and thank god for spellcheck, I can't remember names randomly or other words for things. The weird part is adjectives and pronouns are fine. I just have an issue with nouns if I cannot see an object. The other day, I had to describe a toaster to my wife because I couldn't remember the word "toaster". Same goes with countless other things. My grandfather, mother, and brother all have this issue. However, it did manifest differently for each of us. For my brother he can't think in 3 dimensions very easily. My mother has Dyslexia and my grandfather can't spell....
  - thenipper 11y ago
    I have a similar thing. When i did the battery of SPED tests in elementary school they mentioned something about the two halves not communicating as well. What you talk about not remembering names really strikes a chord with me. Interesting to know what its called. Not that i'm sure I have the same thing but definitely seems similar.
geon 11y ago
For extra fun, try looking at the JS source in Chrome devtools.
- stordoff 11y ago
  Not sure why, but that 'bothered' me way more than the original article. I could read the text of the Wikipedia article without too much of an issue, but as soon as I saw the code all I could think was "This is wrong, and oddly unsettling".
- imperialdrive 11y ago
  wild!
oib 11y ago
Ugh, as someone with dyslexia, it's nothing visual, so trying to visualize being dyslexic is an exercise in futility. You know those "drunk" googles that distort your view? They certainly make it harder to walk, but they in no way make you feel drunk... Try explaining someone what it feels like being on LSD... you can't. Telling people that letters jump around is an easy way to dismiss people whit out having to do a lengthy and tiring explanation that likely wont be understood anyway. I do appreciate the effort that went into this, and that people try to understand, but I don't think this particular experiment is helpful, because people will get the wrong idea about what dyslexia is. Edit: Arzh is right in that I'm being a bit harsh/dramatic here, so I made some small changes.
- Arzh 11y ago
  As someone also with dyslexia, I thought it was pretty good. Yes it is not that extreme but that is the point of the piece I think.
  - geon 11y ago
    Yes. It's just my interpretation of something I heard.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
      - condescendence 11y ago
        Are you on LSD?
    - 205guy 11y ago
      Well, isn't that just burying the lede? I applaud the application of technology, but sometimes I think the neophyte approach, combined with the amplification of the web, can be more detrimental than helpful as intended. Sorry to be uncharitable, but here is how you could've written a more honest introduction: I heard a friend with dyslexia say that letters just jump around for her. Without asking for details, this reminded me that I had a hammer called JavaScript, and this looked like a nail to pound. So I wrote some quick code with made-up parameters and copied info from Wikipedia for cachet. I didn't bother to get any further feedback from dyslexics about this, so it is purely my folk-interpretation of a condition I don't really know about. I then uploaded it to HN to get some feedback, but I still didn't bother explaining what I did or why.
AceJohnny2 11y ago
This reminds me of the meme that went around a few years ago (dear god, 2003!?), claiming that Cambridge researchers showed that you had no trouble reading scrambled word text: "Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe." Of course, it later circulated that you could absolutely make hard-to-read scrambled text, it really depended what words and how scrambled. Anyhow, because the Internet is magic, an actual researcher from Cambridge has since posted a more thorough examination of the phenomenon, with counter-examples and proper citation: http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/ http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/
- giancarlostoro 11y ago
  I think it works best with words you recognize, I'm reading this article and I can't figure out the words I don't recognize, it also is a bit slower to read when all the letters are jumping around every other second. If that sentence had any words I had never seen or heard of before I probably couldn't tell you what the word is supposed to be.
  - JoshTriplett 11y ago
    > I think it works best with words you recognize, I'm reading this article and I can't figure out the words I don't recognize "typoglycemia", for instance?
    - giancarlostoro 11y ago
      Indeed, was wondering what that word was, there was a few others, which kind of deterred me continuing reading the article sadly.
- jackmaney 11y ago
  I know that an anecdote is not data, etc, etc, but I can't read that garbage. I may as well be trying to decrypt it.
bosdev 11y ago
If anyone would like to try this on more websites, I wrapped it in a quick Eager app: http://preview.eager.io/dyslexia/ http://preview.eager.io/dyslexia/ I also modified the source to not use jQuery in the process: https://github.com/zackbloom/dyslexia/blob/master/script.js https://github.com/zackbloom/dyslexia/blob/master/script.js
SandersAK 11y ago
Pretty interesting stuff. What was strange for me is that I had no problem reading 90% of that at the same pace as I usually read except for word I have never seen before. I tend to speed read contextually skipping over words entirely. Maybe a bad thing now that i think of it...
- mgrennan 11y ago
  That's interesting. I once ask a friend who speed reads to read his book to me. He said no because if he did he wouldn't be able to understand it himself. He said he read in ideas or pictures. He explained speed reading was like watching a movie. If he would have to explain what he was seeing or read every word and that was more work then he could do and follow along. It was at this point I understood how different people read differently.
- dogma1138 11y ago
  I had no problems either, and i don't really speed read... That said it's most likely because my brain has a look forward / glance over paragraph mode which is probably engaged all the time. To verify this i took a print screen and it was considerably harder to read. So the ease of readability to me was because the word blinked at least once in the correct order and it registered even if i didn't get to it yet.
ALee 11y ago
Fun fact: Dyslexia in Chinese is anatomically different than Dyslexia in English - so you may be dyslexic in English, but function fine in Chinese: http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2014/09/dyslexia-chinese http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2014/09/dyslexia-chi...
afandian 11y ago
Reminds me of a thing I made. Requires a mouse. http://afandian.com/moreover/alide-in-wonnerlanc/ http://afandian.com/moreover/alide-in-wonnerlanc/
bobisme 11y ago
Maybe this is important, not because it an accurate representation of dyslexia, but because it can simulate the effect of it. I could read everything pretty quickly and accurately except for some of the longest words, but I got this feeling of my brain's CPU overheating. At the end of the article I was frustrated and tired. I wanted to stop reading. This is coming from someone who probably reads tens of thousands (or more) of words per day of articles, emails, comments, and source code.
obeone 11y ago
According to Alice Wellborn, a dyslexia expert of some note: Many years ago, researchers believed that dyslexia was a visual perceptual problem - that it was based in how a person saw letters and words. Now we know for sure, through brain imaging studies, that dyslexia is a problem in the language system of the brain, not the visual system. Dyslexia is the result of a significant weakness in the phonological processing system, or how a person's brain understands and can use the sound-based reading "code". A dyslexic reader has difficulty cracking that code. Here are some important facts about dyslexia: Dyslexia is based in how a person's brain functions. The brain structure is normal - the glitch is in the wiring. Fluent readers use a part of the brain for reading that dyslexic readers do not use. This means that reading remains a slow, laborious process for children and adults with dyslexia. Dyslexia is not related to a person's level of intelligence. Many children and adults with dyslexia are gifted, highly accomplished, creative people.
- viraptor 11y ago
  However some kinds can be corrected like visual problems. I know a guy with dyslexia who uses very specific, slightly tinted (towards green) lenses in his glasses. I can't remember what else was different about them, but basically they were very personalised and had the effect of slowing down the eye movement over the text. (as in, it forced him to track the lines normally instead of jumping around) Based on chat experience, they made a lot of difference.
horsecaptin 11y ago
I wonder if people with dyslexia can read things rendered with the dyslexia app like normal people can read normal text. That would be a trip!
- mgrennan 11y ago
  For me it depends on how it is done. If the application just displaces the same letters. No, it's still hard to read. If the app substitues letters that look alike (dpqb) then I can read it just fine.
ninjakeyboard 11y ago
The attempt at simulation of dyslexia is thumped by the fact that the brain can read fairly fluently when the letters are mixed up. http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/ http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/ Still, this is a cool and share-worthy article imo :)
ecobiker 11y ago
What tools do people use to get around dyslexia? I recently realised that most auto-correct and spelling correction tools breakdown for dyslexic people. The challenge for them is that they know how a word sounds but takes more time than usual to recollect the spelling. The recommendations suggested by standard spell checkers are way off the mark in those cases. Any recommendations would be appreciated.
- randomgyatwork 11y ago
  Spellcheck used to be a problem for me, but over time my muscle memory has improved and it has become easier to type words (ask me to spell a word and ill have no idea). Sometimes my spelling is so off spellcheck doesn't give me options, but putting it into google usually helps, googles guessing algorithm is better than most spellchecks it seems.
- krschultz 11y ago
  Check out http://www.atdyslexia.com/web-based-tools/ http://www.atdyslexia.com/web-based-tools/ or Talk Typer (Chrome extension)
  - ecobiker 11y ago
    Thanks for the link! Seems like a good place to start.
deleted 11y ago
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deleted 11y ago
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ArtDev 11y ago
This is not dyslexia. It is both a curse and a gift. It is extremely misunderstood. This only makes that point more apparent. Dylexia is a gift, once you understand how to adapt. This project is quite stupid.
- fabulist 11y ago
  I'd be very interested to hear more about how it is after one has adapted.
  - cmdrfred 11y ago
    I for one tend to flip numbers around in my head so I never rely on them. This turns out is a good way to make sure that any mathematical calculations you do are correct as I am always double and triple checking them. Einstein also had it and it might of aided him in the same way.
myohan 11y ago
The disabling aspects of Dyslexia are correctable and can be overcome.
- csours 11y ago
  Feel like backing that up with some actual information or resources?
hammeiam 11y ago
Some quick thoughts on the code: http://pastebin.com/hYiB01RH http://pastebin.com/hYiB01RH First, the isLetter function is both wrong and unused. Second, messUpMessyPart is suboptimal. Rather than using a while loop to generate random numbers until a < b, why not do something like `var nums = [rand, rand].sort(); a = nums[0]; b = nums[1]`. There's still the case where a=b, but maybe you just run the function 2/10 times instead of 1/10 to compensate for that case.
randomgyatwork 11y ago
This is certainly a cool effect, but as someone with dyslexia I've never experienced text like this.
samstave 11y ago
Wow, could you use this plugin to effectively DRM a document? This may be a stupid question... Assume you wanted to ensure non plagerism, just use this this to make it such that each visitor is given a random version of the document which the human mind can read but will be tough as hell to copy/paste phrases or paragraphs?
- geon 11y ago
  > ensure non plagerism That would be interesting. You could fairly easily write an automatic spell corrector though. Just replace each word with the most likely anagram as scored by a Markov chain. I imagine you could do random word substitution with synonyms. By this "watermark" you could identify the source of a leaked document.
Your_Creator 11y ago
This may help some people who deal with this problem. http://www.anlp.org/how-could-nlp-help-me.php?cscid=11 http://www.anlp.org/how-could-nlp-help-me.php?cscid=11 http://www.anlp.org/files/dyslexia-strategies_33_153.pdf http://www.anlp.org/files/dyslexia-strategies_33_153.pdf for those who are having extreme difficulty, you may want to let your computer read that to you. best of luck to all, I hope this makes a difference for someone.
sbassi 11y ago
The demo is enlightening, but the text is not telling to more important thing about dyslexia: The main problem is not the difficult to read (that is an issue of course) but the social implications for the people with this, when parents, teachers and pairs believes the kid can't read because is dumb or lazy. Self esteem goes to the floor and also impact in performance even in thing not related with reading. So awareness that this is a real issue (and not that is lazy) and that the kid has to make a lot of effort to catch up is very important to help them have a better future.
mlkmt 11y ago
I have a mild suspicion that my 4 year old niece may be dyslexic. She can read and write all the letters and their sounds, but she can't seem to tie the sounds into syllables, not even the simplest ones. She is not being pressured into reading, she just liked it up to this point. Is there any tell-tale sign I should be aware of ?
- flatline 11y ago
  While I don't know anything scientifically established about childhood development, from my extensive and recent exposure to 4 year olds this sounds 100% normal.
Jemm 11y ago
Great thing about poor vision is I can read this without problem
possibilistic 11y ago
This is uncannily similar to my own personal experience with ADHD. Instead of words appearing scrambled, though, my focus during reading is drawn to random words within a text. I might skip to a new sentence or jump down a few paragraphs; it's entirely arbitrary. This process usually continues forward and back, resetting every few seconds. The longer I read something, the worse the effect becomes. It takes a lot of effort to get through things sometimes. Whatever this effect is, it is somewhat lessened by adequate sleep, a low-sugar diet, and prescribed medication. It never completely goes away, though. I have good days and bad days; even at my best, though, working through long texts, papers, or technical literature will eventually cause my mind to wander. Whatever this is (I blame ADHD), it's prevented me from ever being able to enjoy reading literature or long-form journalism. It's a pity, too, because I enjoy the content. The task itself is just too mentally stressful. Reading is, sadly, a form of labor. It's weird, because skimming comes easily. Visual forms of information are also incredibly easy to digest. Do others with ADHD have a similar problem with this?
- berfarah 11y ago
  I have ADHD PI and I definitely struggle with this. The worst is when I skip to a random word and completely forget what I was doing in the first place.
- el_benhameen 11y ago
  Wow, that sounds very familiar. I find that when I try to dive into long texts, even (especially?) those that I find very interesting and which I'm intent on finishing, my mind wanders off onto wild tangents within a few paragraphs. When I find something interesting that sparks another thought, I'll trail off on that thought instead of filing it away for later. I'll continue to read the words without even realizing that I'm not absorbing any of the content, which means that I'll sometimes need to re-read a passage three or four times. It's incredibly frustrating. You're right that skimming is surprisingly easier, though. I find that if I try to blaze through a passage and read only some of the words, my recall is often better than if I'd tried to read at my normal pace. Less chance to focus on something else. I used to love reading books as a kid, but I started with the above somewhere around high school. I think that the steady stream of novel (and thus exciting) information available on the internet has had an detrimental impact, but of course that can't be all of it. Still, I've lately been trying to limit the quantity of information that I attempt to take in by, say, opening only one or two news articles or HN links (instead of every one that looks interesting), and I've felt more clear-headed since. May I ask when you put a name to the problem and started with medication?
itsnotvalid 11y ago
Funny thing is that the text is still very readable (slower, but still readable) to me. I think it should be much worse for people who have the real problems...
jv22222 11y ago
It would be great to be able to dyslexiafy any page on the internet (both with and without animation) then a lot of folks could use it to explain the various versions/intensities of the condition. For example, therapists could use the tool to help parents understand what their kids are going through. Edit: Of course, this assumes that this is a useful tool to really help people understand dyslexia, which I am not able to judge.
agumonkey 11y ago
My new salt generator.
agumonkey 11y ago
My new salt generator.
yummybear 11y ago
"Frok it on Ghitub"
mostafaberg 11y ago
I wonder how something like http://spritzinc.com http://spritzinc.com would work for a dyslexic person ? It basically gives you a single word at a time to read, would that make it easier for a dyslexic person to read bigger text if it was split into smaller one word chunks ?
- lucb1e 11y ago
  Good question, makes me curious as well!
gilescope 11y ago
(First post so apologies if i've not got the rules right). As a dyslexic myself I'd like to know if any other dylexics speed read and if they do, do they do it by default. I hear myself reading and thus the speed is the speed of someone talking. I found https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11162927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11162927 interesting and wondered about the crossover with dyslexia. Personally I suspect there are a few different flavours of dyslexia - I don't have words move about for me. What I would love to see is a spellchecker done correctly - remembering arbitrary spellings is hard because they are arbitrary. I want a spell checker that tells me the word is wrong and shows me which letters I should be adding / subtracting to get the right spelling. Autocorrect just holds me back from being a better speller. I'm also convinced I'm a much better developer for having dyslexia - far more leftfield than most.
Dysanovic 11y ago
I wrote a Chrome extension which demonstrates Typoglycemia by scrambling the words on whatever webpage you are on. It's similar to the OP's webpage but does not produce a constantly changing page of words. You can find it here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/word-welter/ahmpgoebcklpogmobamdjliigbncofep https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/word-welter/ahmpgo...
kator 11y ago
I don't know about other dyslexics but this not what it feels like to me. For me the words don't move they're just different. The letters are often swapped, I could stare at a word for a long time because I can't quite tell what it is. I even looked at the title of this and thought it was spelled right but then something inside my head said "look again". When I went to the site the problem is the words move rapidly and the changes are too obvious. The challenge with my dyslexia is that the words have changed before I see them in subtle ways that trip you up when you start reading. A couple of things I've noticed: * Handwriting is ok for me if it's printed but cursive is almost impossible for me to read. * Using light fonts on a dark background really helps a lot, when I switched my ipad kindle to black background and white font my reading speed went up almost 20x. It felt like I was part of the human race finally and understood what people meant by a "quick enjoyable read". Accidently my work on computers started on old CRT terminals where the fonts where light and the background was dark. Green screens and Orange screens were awesome I was most productive on them. Over time I got sucked into the windows white background and found myself lost again. I literally at one point thought I was loosing my ability to code and that my writing and reading was getting worse. At some point I would ssh into boxes and use vi because I felt more productive, over time I realized the reason was the ssh client I was using was like the old CRT terminals and had black background with colored foreground fonts. Once I figured that out I changed everything I can to this format of dark background and never looked back. I've also noticed as I get tired my dyslexia really kicks in, I start to ask my wife "Is this word spelled right?" and even with spell check I second guess it's suggestions because the words don't "look right". It's strange I can't tell you the letters are swapped or not, I just feel like cognitive dissonance has kicked in. Dyslexia is hard to explain, if you've ever had that feeling where you were talking along and all of a sudden couldn't remember the name of an old friend or something and your train of thought just collapses on this one issue, maybe even you find yourself embarrassed or a feeling of tunnel vision falls over you. This is exactly how I feel, stupid, what's wrong why can't I read this word, I must be an idiot. I've struggled with this feeling all my life, it permeates my life and I have to battle it almost daily. I know I'm not stupid, but growing up unable to read like my classmates and having teachers tell me I'm an idiot did not help much on this front. I think the hardest thing about dyslexia is that until you know you have it and until others believe it you end living in this horrible self doubting and self deprecating world convinced there is something wrong with you and that you're an idiot. This is the secret pain of dyslexia... I was told in High School that I could never be a programmer because my short-term memory and dyslexia would make it impossible for me to be successful. I was devastated because I was already coding in BASIC on a TRS-80 Model I and having so much success, for once I had found a thing I could type wrong things into over and over and not be judged. Then when I got it right it would just "work". No judgement, no "SYNTAX ERROR AGAIN YOU IDIOT". For the first time in my life I felt accepted and smart, I could code for days and build amazing things. But, being told I couldn't do it killed me, I spent days in a haze and then one day it hit me. The person who told me that was the idiot, not me, they weren't programming, I was already doing it, and better than anyone at my entire school. So luckily for me I ignored that and went on to enjoy 35 years of being in technology, writing any language I desire and mastering anything I put my mind to. In the end dyslexia is just a thing, like all of us we are dealt a hand of cards in this life from random genetic expressions to accidents and horrible people who put us down while we are growing up. It's up to us to overcome, to push through and make the best of all the tools we were given in that random lotto and try very hard to learn along the way and hopefully find some love while doing it all.
alexcasalboni 11y ago
If you are wondering about the JS code: https://gist.github.com/alexcasalboni/ba7c99fb3484579c0dad https://gist.github.com/alexcasalboni/ba7c99fb3484579c0dad
yev 11y ago
funny thing, if you will look in the page source, he is changing the google analytics script as well
tremguy 11y ago
Somehow i just don't get why this is so popular? Someone care to elaborate on what i may have missed? As far as i understand, it doesn't even simulate the real life condition very well, as some dyslexia sufferers here have pointed out.
geekamongus 11y ago
I went to this site with NoScript on, and it took me 5 minutes and a trip back to these comments to figure out that something was supposed to be happening. Is there a name for that?
mgrennan 11y ago
Can you understand this? Why do we complain about spelling? Eye have a spelling chequer, It came with my Pea Sea. It plane lee marks four my revue Miss Steaks I can knot sea. Eye strike the quays and type a whirred And weight four it two say Weather eye am write oar wrong It tells me straight a weigh. Eye ran this poem threw it, Your shore real glad two no. Its vary polished in its weigh. My chequer tolled me sew. A chequer is a bless thing, It freeze yew lodes of thyme. It helps me right all stiles of righting, And aides me when eye rime. Each frays come posed up on my screen Eye trussed too bee a joule. The chequer pours o'er every word Two cheque sum spelling rule.

1356 points by geon 11y ago

I'm guessing this is supposed to do something? Expecting the letters to jumble themselves or similar. Doesn't work for me on either Firefox or Chrome desktop.

mattdotc 11y ago
Data point 2: Works for me. Do you have any content blockers enabled? Perhaps they're interfering.
- 91bananas 11y ago
  Same, works here in latest Chrome. GP is JS running?
robbiet480 11y ago
That is what's happening for me on Chrome 48 for Mac
imadeajoke 11y ago
Do you have dyslexia? Maybe it's just balancing itself out?
- LyndsySimon 11y ago
  Username checks out.
geon 11y ago
Any error messages in your console?
- ola 11y ago
  You are loading things over HTTP instead of HTTPS (Mixed content warning). Change http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.0.3/jquery.min.js http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.0.3/jquery.mi... => //cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.0.3/jquery.min.js
  - geon 11y ago
    Fixed.
- stordoff 11y ago
  It could be a HTTPS error - jquery is loaded over HTTP, so blocked on the secure page. Replacing <script type="text/javascript" src="http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.0.3/jquery.min.js"></script> with <script type="text/javascript" src="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.0.3/jquery.min.js"></script> should enable HTTPS as required AFAIK
  - geon 11y ago
    Thanks. Fixed.
    - stordoff 11y ago
      The Disqus.com comments are still blocked on the secure version of the page (disqus.com/embed.js is loaded via HTTP only), but the main functionality works fine now with HTTPS Everywhere enabled.
stordoff 11y ago
Do you have HTTPS Everywhere enabled? It tries to load jquery over HTTP, which Chrome blocks on the secure version of the page [1] [1] https://geon.github.io/programming/2016/03/03/dsxyliea https://geon.github.io/programming/2016/03/03/dsxyliea Edit: Console shows: Mixed Content: The page at 'https://geon.github.io/programming/2016/03/03/dsxyliea' https://geon.github.io/programming/2016/03/03/dsxyliea' was loaded over HTTPS, but requested an insecure script 'http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.0.3/jquery.min.js' http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.0.3/jquery.mi.... This request has been blocked; the content must be served over HTTPS.
stegosaurus 11y ago
OK, it's decided to work now. Very odd. I had first opened it with NoScript; disabled the blocking; nothing. Tried in Chrome (vanilla install); nothing. Tried a bit later in Chrome: now working.
- geon 11y ago
  I used a jQuery from Cloudflare. It might have decided to not load the first time.
chimeracoder 11y ago
It didn't load for me in Firefox. When it didn't load in Chrome either, I noticed that the script was being loaded from an unsafe source, which both Firefox 46 and Chrome seem to block by default.
keeguon 11y ago
I like that this post has now become a post where people trying to debug the whole damn link to have more difficulty reading a webpage with letters jumbling around :P.

krschultz 11y ago

Shameless plug: if you know anyone with Dyslexia or other learn & attention issues, send them to https://www.understood.org https://www.understood.org. It's a non-profit with many free resources for people trying to overcome these challenges.

mgrennan 11y ago
Thank you for the link. I'm 60 and have suffered with Dyslexia all my life. I do well today thanks to spelling correction and Audio Books. But it is a struggle. There are "English Nazis" everywhere. I hear thing like "You might get promoted if you would play attention to your spelling." Most of my special Ed friends flip burgers even with 140+ IQs.
- stordoff 11y ago
  I'm not dyslexic, but I've also experienced a similar attitude towards spelling. It's something I've always struggled with (I tend to think faster than I write, so frequently muddle words together, and words tend to 'look fine' even if I know the correct spelling - writing this I typed 'thinker' instead of 'think faster', and something like 'wierd' wouldn't stand out to me without spell-check). Fortunately it's never held me back, and deson't effect, e.g., reading, but I've definitely encountered people with an attitude along the lines of "You can't spell, therefore are an idiot" which can be fustrating.
  - edgan 11y ago
    I think I have a mild form of dyslexia, and I am the same way. I can type the wrong word correctly, but thought the right word. I can repeatedly swap some words for each other, like it for he, and he for it. Spell checking works very well for me, but if I picked the wrong word it didn't help. I also make many of the classic mistakes like there and their. Also use of apostrophes if I am not careful. I don't think it has seriously held me back, but I think I have begun to notice a more subtle way it has held be back. I am mgrennan's son.
ntumlin 11y ago

patio11 11y ago

For extra fun, imagine you're reading in a language where the characters look like 紫 and sometimes the lines decide to wiggle like Medusa's hair.

ALee 11y ago
posted above, but it's different for Chinese speakers than English people with dyslexia: http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2014/09/dyslexia-chinese http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2014/09/dyslexia-chi...

matthewcford 11y ago

Having dyslexia, I would say this is rather extreme, I can't speak for everyone but reading isn't like this for most dyslexics. Usually it is a pair of letters being swapped, or numbers order reversed. They don't jump around/change randomly, you just misread it. http://dyslexia.learninginfo.org/symptoms.htm http://dyslexia.learninginfo.org/symptoms.htm The new font for dyslexics also goes into this some more: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-font-helps-dyslexics-read/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-font-helps-dys...

mgrennan 11y ago
Dysgraphia is a part related to dyslexia. This can be a problem, b d p q 9, W M N, O 0 o e, E 5 S R B and more.
- thenipper 11y ago
  Did the parent originally talk about dysgraphia? Because while I have pretty serious dysgraphia I'm not really dyslexic. While related they're pretty significantly different. One of my best friends growing up had dyslexia and with my dysgraphia we always joked about being one 'normal' person.
  - mgrennan 11y ago
    No. At age 60, when I was 12 they really didn't have a name for any of this. For years my school records had be as retarded. It was not until I taught myself calculus and trig in the 8th grade that my parent new something was wrong and sent teaching specialists at OU. They a used the word dyslexia. This was all very new in the 60s.
- geon 11y ago
  I was experimenting with character substitution too, but it won't work well with a variable width font, since the words at the end of the page moves a lot.
  - 11y ago

Alex3917 11y ago

I actually don't have much difficulty reading this, with the exception of a couple technical terms I wasn't familiar with. There was a similar thread a while back with a couple different fun examples, albeit designed to show how we read based on the shape of words (not spelling) rather than to demonstrate dyslexia: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=222459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=222459

mwcremer 11y ago
Imagine what it would be like if almost all the words were ones you "weren't familiar with," which is how it would seem if you had dyslexia and were learning to read.
SamBam 11y ago
You didn't have trouble reading it, because the author deliberately kept the first and last letters the same, and referred to Typoglycemia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typoglycemia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typoglycemia, which has shown that you can (often, not always) mix up the internal letters and the works are still very legible. In doing this, I think the creator was specifically trying to make a Typoglycemia simulator, not a dyslexia simulator, since the original quote said nothing about the first and last letters remaining the same.
- geon 11y ago
  You can't really simulate Typoglycemia, since it isn't a condution, but a phenomenon. But yeah. I wanted the effect to be somewhat distracting while still readable.

antilketan 11y ago

I think it would be possible to train a model (and present it as an app for people with Dyslexia) that cancels out the jumping letters. It is kind of like superimposing two waves which has a coherent text, that most of us see, as the product.

rcthompson 11y ago
You're making a lot of absurd assumptions here. You're assuming that this demo is a completely literal representation of what dyslexics experience, which is unlikely, and you're assuming that there is some predictable pattern to the shuffling, which there isn't (check the source, it's just randomly choosing words and then randomly shuffling their internal letters).
- antilketan 11y ago
  It is a thought and has nothing to do with how this particular entity has been implemented. What I got from the post was that dyslexic people see words/letters differently than us. And maybe there is a way to balance that out with deterministic enforced shuffling (edit: don't take shuffling literally). That is why used the word "train". I don't think anyone except a person with dyslexia knows what the "patterns" are, if any. The patterns could be different for every person too.

slg 11y ago

There are a variety of different forms of Dyslexia, so I can't speak for everyone. However, this doesn't resemble my own personal form. I would be curious to hear from other Dyslexics to see if this is anything close to their experience. The way I usually explain my variety is that my brain is trying to read faster than it can physically. I have no problem reading words (which seems to be what this code is focusing on), the problem is my brain is already moving forward and the word I read is often not the word written on the page. Sometime I can make the contextual correction in my head while other times I have to reread the sentence to make any sense of it. In that instance, I can understand the "jumping around" description as I can read a sentence for a second time and suddenly my brain will see a different word than it saw the first time.

lettergram 11y ago
I have a genetic condition which makes my corpus callosum (the part of the brain that connects the two halves) small(er). This leads (as described by my doctor) both halves processing data and then having trouble syncing. I don't really know if that's true or not. However, it runs in my family (we have taken genetics tests) and it turns out that's why we are neither right or left handed, and we all have various issues related to spelling, geometry, etc. We also have an increased risk of schizophrenia and alzheimer's, but increased IQ according to studies. For me it manifests itself mostly dyslexia. My brain gumbles words, and I don't realy left to right directly, I pretty much read a sentence and have to put it together in my head. Spelling is awful, and thank god for spellcheck, I can't remember names randomly or other words for things. The weird part is adjectives and pronouns are fine. I just have an issue with nouns if I cannot see an object. The other day, I had to describe a toaster to my wife because I couldn't remember the word "toaster". Same goes with countless other things. My grandfather, mother, and brother all have this issue. However, it did manifest differently for each of us. For my brother he can't think in 3 dimensions very easily. My mother has Dyslexia and my grandfather can't spell....
- thenipper 11y ago
  I have a similar thing. When i did the battery of SPED tests in elementary school they mentioned something about the two halves not communicating as well. What you talk about not remembering names really strikes a chord with me. Interesting to know what its called. Not that i'm sure I have the same thing but definitely seems similar.

geon 11y ago

For extra fun, try looking at the JS source in Chrome devtools.

stordoff 11y ago
Not sure why, but that 'bothered' me way more than the original article. I could read the text of the Wikipedia article without too much of an issue, but as soon as I saw the code all I could think was "This is wrong, and oddly unsettling".
imperialdrive 11y ago
wild!

oib 11y ago

Ugh, as someone with dyslexia, it's nothing visual, so trying to visualize being dyslexic is an exercise in futility. You know those "drunk" googles that distort your view? They certainly make it harder to walk, but they in no way make you feel drunk... Try explaining someone what it feels like being on LSD... you can't. Telling people that letters jump around is an easy way to dismiss people whit out having to do a lengthy and tiring explanation that likely wont be understood anyway. I do appreciate the effort that went into this, and that people try to understand, but I don't think this particular experiment is helpful, because people will get the wrong idea about what dyslexia is. Edit: Arzh is right in that I'm being a bit harsh/dramatic here, so I made some small changes.

Arzh 11y ago
As someone also with dyslexia, I thought it was pretty good. Yes it is not that extreme but that is the point of the piece I think.
- geon 11y ago
  Yes. It's just my interpretation of something I heard.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
    - condescendence 11y ago
      Are you on LSD?
  - 205guy 11y ago
    Well, isn't that just burying the lede? I applaud the application of technology, but sometimes I think the neophyte approach, combined with the amplification of the web, can be more detrimental than helpful as intended. Sorry to be uncharitable, but here is how you could've written a more honest introduction: I heard a friend with dyslexia say that letters just jump around for her. Without asking for details, this reminded me that I had a hammer called JavaScript, and this looked like a nail to pound. So I wrote some quick code with made-up parameters and copied info from Wikipedia for cachet. I didn't bother to get any further feedback from dyslexics about this, so it is purely my folk-interpretation of a condition I don't really know about. I then uploaded it to HN to get some feedback, but I still didn't bother explaining what I did or why.

AceJohnny2 11y ago

This reminds me of the meme that went around a few years ago (dear god, 2003!?), claiming that Cambridge researchers showed that you had no trouble reading scrambled word text: "Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe." Of course, it later circulated that you could absolutely make hard-to-read scrambled text, it really depended what words and how scrambled. Anyhow, because the Internet is magic, an actual researcher from Cambridge has since posted a more thorough examination of the phenomenon, with counter-examples and proper citation: http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/ http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/

giancarlostoro 11y ago
I think it works best with words you recognize, I'm reading this article and I can't figure out the words I don't recognize, it also is a bit slower to read when all the letters are jumping around every other second. If that sentence had any words I had never seen or heard of before I probably couldn't tell you what the word is supposed to be.
- JoshTriplett 11y ago
  > I think it works best with words you recognize, I'm reading this article and I can't figure out the words I don't recognize "typoglycemia", for instance?
  - giancarlostoro 11y ago
    Indeed, was wondering what that word was, there was a few others, which kind of deterred me continuing reading the article sadly.
jackmaney 11y ago
I know that an anecdote is not data, etc, etc, but I can't read that garbage. I may as well be trying to decrypt it.

bosdev 11y ago

If anyone would like to try this on more websites, I wrapped it in a quick Eager app: http://preview.eager.io/dyslexia/ http://preview.eager.io/dyslexia/ I also modified the source to not use jQuery in the process: https://github.com/zackbloom/dyslexia/blob/master/script.js https://github.com/zackbloom/dyslexia/blob/master/script.js

SandersAK 11y ago

Pretty interesting stuff. What was strange for me is that I had no problem reading 90% of that at the same pace as I usually read except for word I have never seen before. I tend to speed read contextually skipping over words entirely. Maybe a bad thing now that i think of it...

mgrennan 11y ago
That's interesting. I once ask a friend who speed reads to read his book to me. He said no because if he did he wouldn't be able to understand it himself. He said he read in ideas or pictures. He explained speed reading was like watching a movie. If he would have to explain what he was seeing or read every word and that was more work then he could do and follow along. It was at this point I understood how different people read differently.
dogma1138 11y ago
I had no problems either, and i don't really speed read... That said it's most likely because my brain has a look forward / glance over paragraph mode which is probably engaged all the time. To verify this i took a print screen and it was considerably harder to read. So the ease of readability to me was because the word blinked at least once in the correct order and it registered even if i didn't get to it yet.

ALee 11y ago

Fun fact: Dyslexia in Chinese is anatomically different than Dyslexia in English - so you may be dyslexic in English, but function fine in Chinese: http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2014/09/dyslexia-chinese http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2014/09/dyslexia-chi...

afandian 11y ago

Reminds me of a thing I made. Requires a mouse. http://afandian.com/moreover/alide-in-wonnerlanc/ http://afandian.com/moreover/alide-in-wonnerlanc/

bobisme 11y ago

Maybe this is important, not because it an accurate representation of dyslexia, but because it can simulate the effect of it. I could read everything pretty quickly and accurately except for some of the longest words, but I got this feeling of my brain's CPU overheating. At the end of the article I was frustrated and tired. I wanted to stop reading. This is coming from someone who probably reads tens of thousands (or more) of words per day of articles, emails, comments, and source code.

obeone 11y ago

According to Alice Wellborn, a dyslexia expert of some note: Many years ago, researchers believed that dyslexia was a visual perceptual problem - that it was based in how a person saw letters and words. Now we know for sure, through brain imaging studies, that dyslexia is a problem in the language system of the brain, not the visual system. Dyslexia is the result of a significant weakness in the phonological processing system, or how a person's brain understands and can use the sound-based reading "code". A dyslexic reader has difficulty cracking that code. Here are some important facts about dyslexia: Dyslexia is based in how a person's brain functions. The brain structure is normal - the glitch is in the wiring. Fluent readers use a part of the brain for reading that dyslexic readers do not use. This means that reading remains a slow, laborious process for children and adults with dyslexia. Dyslexia is not related to a person's level of intelligence. Many children and adults with dyslexia are gifted, highly accomplished, creative people.

viraptor 11y ago
However some kinds can be corrected like visual problems. I know a guy with dyslexia who uses very specific, slightly tinted (towards green) lenses in his glasses. I can't remember what else was different about them, but basically they were very personalised and had the effect of slowing down the eye movement over the text. (as in, it forced him to track the lines normally instead of jumping around) Based on chat experience, they made a lot of difference.

horsecaptin 11y ago

I wonder if people with dyslexia can read things rendered with the dyslexia app like normal people can read normal text. That would be a trip!

mgrennan 11y ago
For me it depends on how it is done. If the application just displaces the same letters. No, it's still hard to read. If the app substitues letters that look alike (dpqb) then I can read it just fine.

ninjakeyboard 11y ago

The attempt at simulation of dyslexia is thumped by the fact that the brain can read fairly fluently when the letters are mixed up. http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/ http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/ Still, this is a cool and share-worthy article imo :)

ecobiker 11y ago

What tools do people use to get around dyslexia? I recently realised that most auto-correct and spelling correction tools breakdown for dyslexic people. The challenge for them is that they know how a word sounds but takes more time than usual to recollect the spelling. The recommendations suggested by standard spell checkers are way off the mark in those cases. Any recommendations would be appreciated.

randomgyatwork 11y ago
Spellcheck used to be a problem for me, but over time my muscle memory has improved and it has become easier to type words (ask me to spell a word and ill have no idea). Sometimes my spelling is so off spellcheck doesn't give me options, but putting it into google usually helps, googles guessing algorithm is better than most spellchecks it seems.
krschultz 11y ago
Check out http://www.atdyslexia.com/web-based-tools/ http://www.atdyslexia.com/web-based-tools/ or Talk Typer (Chrome extension)
- ecobiker 11y ago
  Thanks for the link! Seems like a good place to start.

deleted 11y ago

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deleted 11y ago

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ArtDev 11y ago

This is not dyslexia. It is both a curse and a gift. It is extremely misunderstood. This only makes that point more apparent. Dylexia is a gift, once you understand how to adapt. This project is quite stupid.

fabulist 11y ago
I'd be very interested to hear more about how it is after one has adapted.
- cmdrfred 11y ago
  I for one tend to flip numbers around in my head so I never rely on them. This turns out is a good way to make sure that any mathematical calculations you do are correct as I am always double and triple checking them. Einstein also had it and it might of aided him in the same way.

myohan 11y ago

The disabling aspects of Dyslexia are correctable and can be overcome.

csours 11y ago
Feel like backing that up with some actual information or resources?

hammeiam 11y ago

Some quick thoughts on the code: http://pastebin.com/hYiB01RH http://pastebin.com/hYiB01RH First, the isLetter function is both wrong and unused. Second, messUpMessyPart is suboptimal. Rather than using a while loop to generate random numbers until a < b, why not do something like `var nums = [rand, rand].sort(); a = nums[0]; b = nums[1]`. There's still the case where a=b, but maybe you just run the function 2/10 times instead of 1/10 to compensate for that case.

randomgyatwork 11y ago

This is certainly a cool effect, but as someone with dyslexia I've never experienced text like this.

samstave 11y ago

Wow, could you use this plugin to effectively DRM a document? This may be a stupid question... Assume you wanted to ensure non plagerism, just use this this to make it such that each visitor is given a random version of the document which the human mind can read but will be tough as hell to copy/paste phrases or paragraphs?

geon 11y ago
> ensure non plagerism That would be interesting. You could fairly easily write an automatic spell corrector though. Just replace each word with the most likely anagram as scored by a Markov chain. I imagine you could do random word substitution with synonyms. By this "watermark" you could identify the source of a leaked document.

Your_Creator 11y ago

This may help some people who deal with this problem. http://www.anlp.org/how-could-nlp-help-me.php?cscid=11 http://www.anlp.org/how-could-nlp-help-me.php?cscid=11 http://www.anlp.org/files/dyslexia-strategies_33_153.pdf http://www.anlp.org/files/dyslexia-strategies_33_153.pdf for those who are having extreme difficulty, you may want to let your computer read that to you. best of luck to all, I hope this makes a difference for someone.

sbassi 11y ago

The demo is enlightening, but the text is not telling to more important thing about dyslexia: The main problem is not the difficult to read (that is an issue of course) but the social implications for the people with this, when parents, teachers and pairs believes the kid can't read because is dumb or lazy. Self esteem goes to the floor and also impact in performance even in thing not related with reading. So awareness that this is a real issue (and not that is lazy) and that the kid has to make a lot of effort to catch up is very important to help them have a better future.

mlkmt 11y ago

I have a mild suspicion that my 4 year old niece may be dyslexic. She can read and write all the letters and their sounds, but she can't seem to tie the sounds into syllables, not even the simplest ones. She is not being pressured into reading, she just liked it up to this point. Is there any tell-tale sign I should be aware of ?

flatline 11y ago
While I don't know anything scientifically established about childhood development, from my extensive and recent exposure to 4 year olds this sounds 100% normal.

Jemm 11y ago

Great thing about poor vision is I can read this without problem

possibilistic 11y ago

This is uncannily similar to my own personal experience with ADHD. Instead of words appearing scrambled, though, my focus during reading is drawn to random words within a text. I might skip to a new sentence or jump down a few paragraphs; it's entirely arbitrary. This process usually continues forward and back, resetting every few seconds. The longer I read something, the worse the effect becomes. It takes a lot of effort to get through things sometimes. Whatever this effect is, it is somewhat lessened by adequate sleep, a low-sugar diet, and prescribed medication. It never completely goes away, though. I have good days and bad days; even at my best, though, working through long texts, papers, or technical literature will eventually cause my mind to wander. Whatever this is (I blame ADHD), it's prevented me from ever being able to enjoy reading literature or long-form journalism. It's a pity, too, because I enjoy the content. The task itself is just too mentally stressful. Reading is, sadly, a form of labor. It's weird, because skimming comes easily. Visual forms of information are also incredibly easy to digest. Do others with ADHD have a similar problem with this?

berfarah 11y ago
I have ADHD PI and I definitely struggle with this. The worst is when I skip to a random word and completely forget what I was doing in the first place.
el_benhameen 11y ago
Wow, that sounds very familiar. I find that when I try to dive into long texts, even (especially?) those that I find very interesting and which I'm intent on finishing, my mind wanders off onto wild tangents within a few paragraphs. When I find something interesting that sparks another thought, I'll trail off on that thought instead of filing it away for later. I'll continue to read the words without even realizing that I'm not absorbing any of the content, which means that I'll sometimes need to re-read a passage three or four times. It's incredibly frustrating. You're right that skimming is surprisingly easier, though. I find that if I try to blaze through a passage and read only some of the words, my recall is often better than if I'd tried to read at my normal pace. Less chance to focus on something else. I used to love reading books as a kid, but I started with the above somewhere around high school. I think that the steady stream of novel (and thus exciting) information available on the internet has had an detrimental impact, but of course that can't be all of it. Still, I've lately been trying to limit the quantity of information that I attempt to take in by, say, opening only one or two news articles or HN links (instead of every one that looks interesting), and I've felt more clear-headed since. May I ask when you put a name to the problem and started with medication?

itsnotvalid 11y ago

Funny thing is that the text is still very readable (slower, but still readable) to me. I think it should be much worse for people who have the real problems...

jv22222 11y ago

It would be great to be able to dyslexiafy any page on the internet (both with and without animation) then a lot of folks could use it to explain the various versions/intensities of the condition. For example, therapists could use the tool to help parents understand what their kids are going through. Edit: Of course, this assumes that this is a useful tool to really help people understand dyslexia, which I am not able to judge.

agumonkey 11y ago

My new salt generator.

agumonkey 11y ago

My new salt generator.

yummybear 11y ago

"Frok it on Ghitub"

mostafaberg 11y ago

I wonder how something like http://spritzinc.com http://spritzinc.com would work for a dyslexic person ? It basically gives you a single word at a time to read, would that make it easier for a dyslexic person to read bigger text if it was split into smaller one word chunks ?

lucb1e 11y ago
Good question, makes me curious as well!

gilescope 11y ago

(First post so apologies if i've not got the rules right). As a dyslexic myself I'd like to know if any other dylexics speed read and if they do, do they do it by default. I hear myself reading and thus the speed is the speed of someone talking. I found https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11162927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11162927 interesting and wondered about the crossover with dyslexia. Personally I suspect there are a few different flavours of dyslexia - I don't have words move about for me. What I would love to see is a spellchecker done correctly - remembering arbitrary spellings is hard because they are arbitrary. I want a spell checker that tells me the word is wrong and shows me which letters I should be adding / subtracting to get the right spelling. Autocorrect just holds me back from being a better speller. I'm also convinced I'm a much better developer for having dyslexia - far more leftfield than most.

Dysanovic 11y ago

I wrote a Chrome extension which demonstrates Typoglycemia by scrambling the words on whatever webpage you are on. It's similar to the OP's webpage but does not produce a constantly changing page of words. You can find it here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/word-welter/ahmpgoebcklpogmobamdjliigbncofep https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/word-welter/ahmpgo...

kator 11y ago

I don't know about other dyslexics but this not what it feels like to me. For me the words don't move they're just different. The letters are often swapped, I could stare at a word for a long time because I can't quite tell what it is. I even looked at the title of this and thought it was spelled right but then something inside my head said "look again". When I went to the site the problem is the words move rapidly and the changes are too obvious. The challenge with my dyslexia is that the words have changed before I see them in subtle ways that trip you up when you start reading. A couple of things I've noticed: * Handwriting is ok for me if it's printed but cursive is almost impossible for me to read. * Using light fonts on a dark background really helps a lot, when I switched my ipad kindle to black background and white font my reading speed went up almost 20x. It felt like I was part of the human race finally and understood what people meant by a "quick enjoyable read". Accidently my work on computers started on old CRT terminals where the fonts where light and the background was dark. Green screens and Orange screens were awesome I was most productive on them. Over time I got sucked into the windows white background and found myself lost again. I literally at one point thought I was loosing my ability to code and that my writing and reading was getting worse. At some point I would ssh into boxes and use vi because I felt more productive, over time I realized the reason was the ssh client I was using was like the old CRT terminals and had black background with colored foreground fonts. Once I figured that out I changed everything I can to this format of dark background and never looked back. I've also noticed as I get tired my dyslexia really kicks in, I start to ask my wife "Is this word spelled right?" and even with spell check I second guess it's suggestions because the words don't "look right". It's strange I can't tell you the letters are swapped or not, I just feel like cognitive dissonance has kicked in. Dyslexia is hard to explain, if you've ever had that feeling where you were talking along and all of a sudden couldn't remember the name of an old friend or something and your train of thought just collapses on this one issue, maybe even you find yourself embarrassed or a feeling of tunnel vision falls over you. This is exactly how I feel, stupid, what's wrong why can't I read this word, I must be an idiot. I've struggled with this feeling all my life, it permeates my life and I have to battle it almost daily. I know I'm not stupid, but growing up unable to read like my classmates and having teachers tell me I'm an idiot did not help much on this front. I think the hardest thing about dyslexia is that until you know you have it and until others believe it you end living in this horrible self doubting and self deprecating world convinced there is something wrong with you and that you're an idiot. This is the secret pain of dyslexia... I was told in High School that I could never be a programmer because my short-term memory and dyslexia would make it impossible for me to be successful. I was devastated because I was already coding in BASIC on a TRS-80 Model I and having so much success, for once I had found a thing I could type wrong things into over and over and not be judged. Then when I got it right it would just "work". No judgement, no "SYNTAX ERROR AGAIN YOU IDIOT". For the first time in my life I felt accepted and smart, I could code for days and build amazing things. But, being told I couldn't do it killed me, I spent days in a haze and then one day it hit me. The person who told me that was the idiot, not me, they weren't programming, I was already doing it, and better than anyone at my entire school. So luckily for me I ignored that and went on to enjoy 35 years of being in technology, writing any language I desire and mastering anything I put my mind to. In the end dyslexia is just a thing, like all of us we are dealt a hand of cards in this life from random genetic expressions to accidents and horrible people who put us down while we are growing up. It's up to us to overcome, to push through and make the best of all the tools we were given in that random lotto and try very hard to learn along the way and hopefully find some love while doing it all.

alexcasalboni 11y ago

If you are wondering about the JS code: https://gist.github.com/alexcasalboni/ba7c99fb3484579c0dad https://gist.github.com/alexcasalboni/ba7c99fb3484579c0dad

yev 11y ago

funny thing, if you will look in the page source, he is changing the google analytics script as well

tremguy 11y ago

Somehow i just don't get why this is so popular? Someone care to elaborate on what i may have missed? As far as i understand, it doesn't even simulate the real life condition very well, as some dyslexia sufferers here have pointed out.

geekamongus 11y ago

I went to this site with NoScript on, and it took me 5 minutes and a trip back to these comments to figure out that something was supposed to be happening. Is there a name for that?

mgrennan 11y ago

Can you understand this? Why do we complain about spelling? Eye have a spelling chequer, It came with my Pea Sea. It plane lee marks four my revue Miss Steaks I can knot sea. Eye strike the quays and type a whirred And weight four it two say Weather eye am write oar wrong It tells me straight a weigh. Eye ran this poem threw it, Your shore real glad two no. Its vary polished in its weigh. My chequer tolled me sew. A chequer is a bless thing, It freeze yew lodes of thyme. It helps me right all stiles of righting, And aides me when eye rime. Each frays come posed up on my screen Eye trussed too bee a joule. The chequer pours o'er every word Two cheque sum spelling rule.