Interesting Thoughts on Literacy Privilege

[davidgillon]

I read an aintesrting article on how perceptions would vary if those of us wityh dyspraxia or dysleaxia and ogfther syuch syndromes didn't spend the extra effort to remove all the ianadvertent spelling and grammar errors from out writing.

For me it's dyspraxia, the specific learning difficulty that affects movement (amongst other stuff)  - I know what keys I want to hit, but that doesn't mean my fingers hit the right ones, or in the right order, no matter I've been using a keyboard daily for over 30 years. It's a thought provoking piece and talks about the way people react as 'Literacy Privilege', which is a sobering thought, having read it I'm not entirely comfortable with how I react if anyone's spelling is off, no matter the reason,

Comments

[liv]

I completely agree with the original article on literacy privilege; it's classist and ableist go around mocking people's less than perfect standard grammar. But I think the linked article brings up an issue of conflicting access needs. I can read the uncorrected text, and it takes a barely noticeable effort. And I'm entirely fine with neurotypical, abled me making that minor effort rather than insisting that writers have to carefully correct everything even if that's really hard work for them.

The problem is, I'm if anything hyperlexic (not formally diagnosed, but I fit the profile); I think many readers just wouldn't be able to read text with that many typos and spelling errors and non-standard grammar. If everybody wrote like that, it would exclude most non-native speakers and probably quite a few people who themselves have cognitive issues and differences that make reading harder.

[davidgillon]

Which is a fair point. It wouldn't be the first reasonable adjustment to be problematic for another group of disabled people, textured paving is the classic example, great for the VI community, loathed by us mobility impaired types.

I'm certainly not proposing adopting it for my own wider use, and I don't think the author is either, but it does form a useful illustration of how much harder we're having to work - especially for the dyslexic peeps, I might hit the wrong keys, but I don't then have to work out which one is the wrong one. OTOH, if someone can't really communicate any other way, then it becomes a reasonable adjustment, even if it does exclude some others.

[cxcvi]

Not sure if this is completely the same, but...

So... communication struggle... often, hard find words, and also not know what word want use... becomes much stress and pain, and often no words at all. Have recent adapt talk like this, no glue, just words, to force through struggle. Feel make some words, else no words...

Has been very freeing, not needing to worry about how the words come out, even though I sometimes need to resort to it just to communicate at all. I try to limit it to people who I think will be able to understand that this is a need (an aid to communication), and not just lazyness.

Words hard. Strict words harder, and not safe.

[davidgillon]

I think it's definitely in the ballpark for what's being talked about. Adopting standard presumptions of grammar and spelling and format is significantly more difficult for some disabled people than for most of the rest of the population. And I think there is potentially space to request these adaptions be accepted by other people as coping mechanisms.

[forestofglory]

I have mixed feelings about this for basically the reasons that Liv states. I have Learning Disablity (auditory processing disorder) and so have lot of trouble spelling and my gramer is pretty poor. It takes effort for me to make text legiable. I consider spellcheck assitave techology. (I'm accutly making an effort to not respond to all the red underlines here so you can see what it looks like.)

Every imporant paper and or email I write is proff read by a read human. So yes effort and planning go into standard apearing text.

On the other hand I also have hard time reading text that isn't standard. I can't sound out words so I just read by recosing the shape of things, and the less standard the less likely they are to be shapes I can recosie.

[davidgillon]

In some ways this is actually more useful in an illustrative than practical format. I'm not at all certain I'd have been able to puzzle out even my own example if it wasn't my own words and topic (though cxcvi's approach is different, it's abbreviated and compressed rather than difficult to decipher). It demonstrates the extra work we're putting in, which might be a useful counter to people who claim the Specific Learning Difficulties don't need reasonable adjustments.

I can see a limited set of circumstances in which it might be useful as a reasonable adjustment, with acknowledged limitations in legibility, but it's going to run into Literacy Privilege in fairly short order in attempting to deal with the mainstream.

And yes, it's really, really difficult not to fix the errors, isn't it!

[lilysea]

As someone for who reading is a lot harder now than before I got sick (I now have concentration problems, brain fog, short term memory problems) uncorrected text is super hard for me to read, and I will think "Ugh!" and skip it.

Ironically, my spoken speech can be dodgy, between aphasia and word-typos, where I think one word but say another.
This is getting better as I reduce the lyrica (anti-epilepsy med taken for pain), but it's not back to pre-illness levels by any means.

[davidgillon]

I've not tried lyrica/pregablin, but my experience with gabapentin was not a happy one, I basically lost the back end of 2012/first half of 2013. I know pregablin's supposed to be less side-effect prone than gaba was, but that doesn't seem the case for people I know who've tried it.

[lilysea]

Pregabalin caused me REALLY bad aphasia (and difficulty reading) at doses of 600mg/day. My balance was also terrible at high doses - I was literally holding onto walls as I walked around the house, and lying face down on the floor of my physio's waiting room while waiting for my appointment to start, because holding myself upright in a chair (rather than toppling forward out of it) was too hard.

I've been gradually weaning myself off it over the past 18 months.

You have to withdraw slowly or you risk permanent edema - fluid buildup - in a part of the brain called the corpus callosum. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/07/050711015101.htm

I'm now down to 27.5mg/day and my aphasia is MUCH better but not 100%.

[davidgillon]

Interesting on the withdrawal, that's not something I'd seen before. I think I was taking 300mg twice a day with gaba, and didn't come off it in a controlled fashion, so possibly got lucky.