Why we need a more serious political response to the challenges of dyslexia

That's how some in the national press would condemn dyslexia. Once more this week, dyslexia has been accused of being a fictional diagnosis that does more to prop up an education industry obsessed with coloured paper and typos than helping students.

The backlash has been provoked by TV chef Jamie Oliver's call for the UK government to make vital changes to education for children with the condition. He claims that the current system is "too slim" for dyslexic and neurodivergent children and that "too many kids are falling through the cracks."

Oliver, a dyslexic himself, is producing a Channel 4 documentary on the subject that will be released later this year.

Celebrities who stick their head above the parapet these days are dismissed as overprivileged and proselytising white saviours. But there is also a lazy reactionaryism among the public that dismisses certain medical conditions as elective and self-indulgent compared to "real" diseases and afflictions.

To flat-out dismiss dyslexia as being mythical is a comical misconception for anyone who actually has some type of it, particularly as an adult. Dyslexia remains an awkward taboo precisely because it has more combinations than is generally discussed beyond the 'garden variety' challenge of reading and writing.

I have auditory dyslexia, which is not the simplest of things to explain when dyslexia is still understood as being about words and language. It is an auditory processing disorder that makes learning to speak difficult. As challenging as it was to learn the fundamentals of communication as a child, the effects are even more impractical as an adult.

The celebrity response to dyslexia has made a policy commitment to dealing with it hard to realise.

According to Princess Beatrice, dyslexia is a "gift." She said her children would be "lucky" if they had it. As a dyslexic and a father, I can assure you they would not. The princess is the latest in a long line of famous faces and campaigners who think of dyslexia as a unique ability. The new Star Trek series even retroactively gave Spock the ailment, and dyslexia was the only way he could save the galaxy.

All seem blind to the long-term damage such a cliche does. It is not a superpower. It is a miserable quagmire of recall that often feels like scrambling around your house, knowing you have misplaced something but cannot quite remember what and certainly not where.

Dyslexia Scotland puts the number of Scotland's dyslexic community at around 545,400. This number does not include the families of those who are dyslexic or those who employ, work with, teach and support dyslexic people. To write off the lived experiences of these people as mini-superheroes is utterly absurd to the challenges dyslexia presents.

But so, too, is the white saviour complex of celebrities who mean well. Society is fatigued with megastars making a noblesse oblige effort to draw attention to issues of note or personal experiences, and they face doing more harm to the cause they are championing.

How best to proceed? Oliver means well, but what is missing is the brass tacks. Businesses and political stakeholders will soon sit up if we can attach a specific price tag to the cost to firms in the future if we do not invest in dyslexic children. Their ears will perk up if dyslexia is framed as being easily mediated with the modest cost of workplace assessments and adaptations to improve overall productivity.

A report by Dyslexia Scotland, in collaboration with the University of Glasgow and supported by Morton Fraser MacRoberts, reveals that fewer than half of Scots with dyslexia (41 per cent) receive reasonable workplace adjustments. The British Dyslexia Association likewise reported that schools in England fail to diagnose at least 80 percent of pupils with dyslexia.

Supporting children and the early years intervention Oliver discussed are critical, as is diagnosing and supporting adults. This is the unsexy second part of the equation that holds the key to the entire problem. In 2004, the Dyslexia Institute said poor literacy and essential skills as a result of undiagnosed dyslexia cost the UK economy £1bn a year.

Dyslexia needs to be reframed as a financial issue. It might go against the grain of 20 years of prioritising personal stories, but the pound-in-your-pocket messaging would fit better with the economic times, particularly when the new Labour government is looking to cut the welfare bill.

Even more so if dyslexia is understood as wasted potential in the age of remarkable technological innovation. The UK is tech-rich. We have no shortage of devices, gadgets, and gizmos. Some serious hardware underpins my dyslexia, like web clip-taking software and now, with the commercial advent of AI, programs that do not just dictate but also produce summaries. Advanced spelling and grammar software can provide cutting-edge and useful guidance for those with specific speech and language issues.

The British Dyslexia Association notes that nearly half of parents reported spending over £1,000 extra per year because of their child's dyslexia. The public/personal costs of educational psychologists and paediatricians, geographic disparities to appropriate speech and language clinicians, and the societal benefit of better diagnosis and how to use technologies are messages today's politicians will understand.

Awareness weeks must pinpoint and accurately determine who is footing the bill and how we all lose out if dyslexia treatment is short-changed. Oliver and others emphasise the human cost of dyslexia, but this is no longer the fashionable narrative. Worse, it provokes the kind of backlash seen this week that condemns dyslexia support as a stream of freebies. It also sets the economic case for investment in care back by decades.

Not everyone who has dyslexia goes on to become an entrepreneur or outstanding in their field. Many quietly struggle, adapt and drive onward because it's the only choice.

We will see a more serious political response to dyslexia if advocates, support groups, and charities refocus their research and frame untreated dyslexia as a totally wasteful economic exercise. We need to think strategically and adopt concerted public affairs strategies that resonate with the public, not just starry-eyed rhetoric about the merits of neurodiversity.

If we do that now, then one day, dyslexia will be inconvenient, the neurological equivalent of a staved hand: not a write-off, not an end, just something that politicians, businesses and society would be savvy to support so people can thrive in their jobs and live their best lives.