Every time I use a regular spell checker it hits me that the people who designed these spell checkers did not have in mind people like me, people who suffer from dyslexia and have really bad spelling. When I use a regular spell checker I receive a word which is underlined in red and I am faced with one of the following problems:

  1. My intended word is not in the suggestions list. This is because my spelling was too far away from the correct spelling (meaning I spell REALLY badly), and the spellchecker simply could not pick up on my intended word.
  2. My intended word is in the suggestions list, but since I am such a bad speller, I have no idea how to select the correct word from the list.

Misused words, words that are spelled correctly but are not the words I intended to write, are also a major issue. I encounter misused words either by entering the misused word originally or selecting a misused (wrong) word from the spell checker’s word suggestion list. I then send these sentences with the misused words out to the world without even knowing what nonsense I have just written. For example, many times I have invited business colleagues for a “Mating” instead of a “Meeting”… I tried all available spellchecking and writing assistance technologies, but none seemed to work for me. After discussing the regular spell checkers limitations with many dyslexics, we began to think and design a spell checker specifically targeting the dyslexic community. Such a spell checker would include the following key capabilities:

  • A spellchecker that can pick up on really bad spelling, and offer the correct suggestions
  • A context spellchecker, that can understand the context of what I am writing, in order to avoid situations where I write a correctly spelled word but it is a  completely different word then the one I intended (misused word)
  • A spellchecker that offers for each suggested word its meaning so that I can easily select the intended word
  • A spellchecker that can read out loud to me what I wrote, to make sure that what I wrote is really what I intended to write.

Ghotit context-spellchecker incorporates all the capabilities listed above. If you are suffering from dyslexia, you should know that Ghotit, unlike regular spellcheckers, was designed specifically to meet your (our) unique spell checking needs.

One thought on “Dyslexia and Regular Spell Checkers

  • February 17, 2010 at 10:00 am
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    Very interesting blog. Thank you for sharing.

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