Category Archives: News-and-Updates-TEXT

FREE audio books for people with print disabilities

FREE audio books for people with print disabilities
Published on May 4, 2010 by Robert Langston

How people with print disabilities can get my books and many others for FREE

Wow, what an honor! The organization Learning Ally has recorded both my books (For the Children and The Power of Dyslexic Thinking) for its audio library.

Having my books available through Learning Ally brings my struggle with a print disability full circle. In the 1970s, this organization began to serve an increasing number of people who had learning disabilities, and I was one of them. I received my textbooks in audio format as part of my Individual Education Plan in school.

Now, my books will be available to people just like me through Learning Ally. The old Hair Club for Men commercial comes to mind: "I'm not only the president, but I'm also a client." I am not only an author, but I'm also a client!

You can imagine my delight when I received an email saying my books had been approved for recording. I was doubly delighted when I was asked to record an introduction for each book. Learning Ally has recording studios around the country utilizing a volunteer force of more than 5,000 people who donate over 332,000 hours annually to recording books. I was invited to the studio in Charlottesville, Virginia, for my recording session.

About a month after my invitation to record the introductions, my speaking schedule landed me within 60 miles of Charlottesville. I emailed Mary Ann, my contact at the studio, and asked if we could schedule my recording session for March 9 at 4:30 p.m., and she agreed. In preparation for the session, I called her on the hour drive to the studio and asked her what she wanted to accomplish during the session.

Mary Ann replied that she just wanted me to read the introductions to my books. With that, my heart jumped into my throat. It's true that I am the author of the material, but a ghostwriter wrote the books, and I read on a fifth-grade level! I then found myself having a slight out-of-body experience. I heard myself replying, "Oh! I can't do that. I can't read."

Mary Ann sounded shocked. "You can't read!" she said. It was in that moment that I realized she was thinking of me as an author, but not as an author with dyslexia. Mary Ann, being a consummate professional, recovered faster than I did from the shock. She said, "When you get here, we will figure it out."

I hung up the phone and did what I always do when dyslexia gets the better of me. I called my momma! When Mom answered, I asked her, "Do you have copies of my books handy?" She said she did, and I told her that we had less than an hour for me to try to memorize the introductions. Mom immediately started reading them to me. An hour later, I felt pretty good about the 133-word introduction to For the Children. On the other hand, the 833-word introduction to The Power of Dyslexic Thinking was not going to happen.

I arrived at Learning Ally and Mary Ann had assessed the situation just as I had. She asked if I could read the short introduction to For the Children and record a statement of introduction for The Power of Dyslexic Thinking. So, the plan was set.

The volunteer production assistant assigned to me must have been the patron saint for patience because it took me a full two hours and thirty minutes to read 133 words and dictate a 30-second introduction. By the time we were done, I was worn out, but she was still smiling and congratulating me on a good job.

My work is now done, and it is free to individuals with documented print disabilities, such as a learning disability, visual impairment, or other physical disability.

Learning Ally Individual Memberships are free. For more information, click this link Learning Ally, or call the Membership Services Department at 800-221-4792.

A gift from one dyslexic to another,

Rob

Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/power-dyslexic-thinking/201005/free-audio-books-people-print-disabilities




What Causes Dyslexia? We Do!

What Causes Dyslexia? We Do!
Published on December 20, 2009 by Robert Langston

Note: The thoughts expressed in this article are that of the author and in no way reflect the Virginia Department of Education's position on learning disabilities of a neurobiological nature (dyslexia).

What Causes Dyslexia?

I am asked this question frequently during television, radio, and print media interviews, but recently when a Facebook friend asked me what causes dyslexia, I did not feel restricted to the standard medical explanation I usually give as an answer. I decided to share what I believe to be a more humanistic and holistic cause of dyslexia. Here is my answer.

The cause of dyslexia is a perfectly healthy, functioning brain being born into a largely literate society. You see, the root cause of dyslexia is a largely illiterate society becoming largely literate over the last two hundred years. There is nothing medically wrong with a dyslexic person's brain. I have seen fMRI's and MEG scans to prove it. This leads me to believe that dyslexia is a technological disability, not a physical disability.

The technology is the written language, and the disability is that not every brain is born naturally wired to learn this technology easily.

Man created written language approximately four thousand years ago. When early symbols were drawn on tortoise shells, and then assigned value or meaning, which in turn other people could interpret, that was the equivalent of the Smart Board, I-Phone, and Internet all rolled into one. It was the newest, hottest, earth-shaking technology of its day. And, yes, it was a man-made technology. Now, fast forward to the last one hundred or so years. We, as a society, are dictating that everyone needs to be proficient with reading and writing.

So, you see, we, as a society, caused dyslexia. As little as two hundred years ago, if you had dyslexia, you probably would not have even known it. Now, don't get me wrong, striving to be a highly literate society is a good thing. The problem I see with this societal demand, relating to this relatively new technological revolution, is the inferred stereotype that people not proficient with the written language, are somehow stupid.

What causes dyslexia? In short, we do!

What causes the pain and suffering that almost always accompanies dyslexia, we do!

Some old food for some new thought,

Rob

Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/power-dyslexic-thinking/200912/what-causes-dyslexia-we-do




Dyslexia Fosters Entrepreneurs?

More than a third of business owners may be dyslexic. But most reveal the reading disorder is a gift that aided their success.

A new film airing tonight on HBO2 examines the role of dyslexia in the lives of successful entrepreneurs and corporate leaders around the world.

The film, Journey into Dyslexia, directed by Alan and Susan Raymond, presents several prominent dyslexic adults including Ben Foss, inventor of the Intel Reader; Steve Walker, New England Wood Pellet founder and CEO; and Carol Greider, Ph.D., a 2009 Nobel Laureate in Physiology and Medicine.

They're in good company. Richard Branson, Charles Schwab, Ted Turner, and Cisco CEO John Chambers are all dyslexic. Even Henry Ford had the disorder.

"Are these people more visionary, can they see things differently?" asks Carl Schramm, CEO of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to advance entrepreneurship, who also appears in the film. "They come to the realization that society pronounces the number of skill sets that are necessary for success that they don't seem to have. And they go out and build the environment in which they will impact. That's sort of my working hypothesis to explain why all these entrepreneurs exist who have traits of dyslexia."

The correlation betweeen dyslexia and entrepreneurship has long been a subject of scientific inquiry. In 2004, the Cass Business School in London found that 20 percent of English entrepreneurs polled said they were dyslexic, while managers "reflected the UK national dyslexia incidence level of 4 percent." In the U.S., however, the results were even more persuasive: the same researchers behind the U.K. study found that 35 percent of American entrepreneurs surveyed identified themselves as dyslexic.

"The study also concluded that dyslexics were more likely than nondyslexics to delegate authority and to excel in oral communication and problem solving and were twice as likely to own two or more businesses," according to The New York Times, which first reported on the research back in 2007.

When Time magazine asked Richard Branson, the media mogul and founder of Virgin, whether his dyslexia hindered his businesses abilities, Branson had a pointedly candid response. "Strangely, I think my dyslexia has helped,"  he said. "When I launch a new company, I need to understand the advertising. If I can understand it, then I believe anybody can. Virgin speaks in normal language instead of using phrases that nobody understands, like 'financial-service industry.' "

Still, a 2010 Roper Poll showed that four out five Americans associate dyslexia with mental retardation even though it has nothing to do with intelligence or mental illness of any kind. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke defines dyslexia as "a brain-based type of learning disability that specifically impairs a person's ability to read." The institute notes that people with the condition "typically read at levels significantly lower than expected despite having normal intelligence."

Some academics attribute dyslexia's correlation with entrepreneurship to the fact that the disorder required them from a young age to rely on intuition and social cues. "There are many positive attributes that can't be taught that people are generally not aware of," Dr. Sally Shaywitz, a professor of learning development at Yale University, told BusinessWeek in 2007. "We always write about how we're losing human capital—dyslexics are not able to achieve their potential because they've had to go around the system."

Having a disability like dyslexia, however, forces one to develop street smarts as well as how to handle hardship and failure—solid preparation for life as an entrepreneur.

"Many of the coping skills dyslexics learn in their formative years become best practices for the successful entrepreneur," BusinessWeek noted. "A child who chronically fails standardized tests must become comfortable with failure. Being a slow reader forces you to extract only vital information, so that you're constantly getting right to the point. Dyslexics are also forced to trust and rely on others to get things done—an essential skill for anyone working to build a business."

Source: http://www.inc.com/articles/201105/are-dyslexics-better-visionaries.html




A dyslexic walks into a doctor’s office

A dyslexic walks into a doctor's office...
Published on January 3, 2010 by Robert Langston

 

(Note: Some of the medical terms and situational content contained in this article may be unsuitable for children under the age of 18 years old.)

What does a urinary track infection and an ear infection have to do with dyslexia? Paperwork!

A major contributor to urinary track infections (UTI) is caffeine. A major contributor to caffeine being in my body is a hectic travel schedule: a five-hour plane ride, followed by a same-day, four-hour drive up the California coast to San Luis Obispo, four days of work, three time zones from home, and then steps one and two repeated to get back home. For me, this is a pretty good formula for UTI and a trip to the doctor.

I am a fairly active forty-two-year-old, and, as such, I have my records on file at several local urgent care facilities. The office I headed to for my UTI was one of them. I had previously visited it with two broken ribs from a freak zip line accident in my backyard. My wife had done the necessary paperwork, and I was admitted.

I was not anticipating any paperwork for this UTI trip because I was a returning patient, but a full dyslexic paperwork meltdown was on the way. I did not read the notice taped to the check-in desk window, which was not uncommon for me, so when I was handed the new patient form, I was horrified and glanced over and read the notice I had previously ignored: "As of 8-1-09 we will be using a new practice management system which will require all patients to fill out new paperwork in full."

Welcome to my dyslexic nightmare.

1. "Where were you born?" "Bermingham [Birmingham], Alabama."
2. "Are you currently taking any medicines?" "Rananadean [Ranitidine]." Can anyone spell this without a medical dictionary?
3. "Are you allergic to any medicines?" "Omeniself [Omnicef]." I was not likely to get that one either.
4. "Have you been here before?" "Returning paeshint [patient]."
5. "Date of birth?" "11/28/67." I got this one, but my own birthday is the only one I know by heart.
6. "What are you here for?" "Urinaray track infecksion [urinary track infection]." I did not know I could have put UTI until I noticed it on the take-home information sheet.
7. "What is your occupation?" "Author." Nice! The irony.

The list went on, but I think you get the point. I have been in this situation many times before, and I am comfortable enough with my dyslexia that I either just turn in the paperwork with a quick "I'm dyslexic. If you can't read anything, just ask me," or I call someone and have that person spell everything for me. The "No Cell Phones" sign in the lobby prompted me to go with the first choice. My second bout with the medical profession was not as familiar or as comfortable.

Several weeks earlier, my son had an ear infection. I met my wife at the pediatrician's office. After the appointment, I took my son's prescription to the Kroger pharmacy to be filled. The first thing the pharmacist asked me was my son's birth date. As I said before, the only birth date I know by heart is my own. Not one other birthday has been successfully stored in my brain. On my last formal test for learning disabilities, during college, I tested out on a kindergarten level in number sequencing. Months, days, and years just don't stick with me, not even my own children's birthdays.

I had to endure the look on the pharmacist's face while I went through my whole process of "He was born on St. Patrick's Day, so that's in March. January, February, March, so that's the third month. What day is St. Patrick's Day on? The 17th (with a little help from the pharmacist). Okay, I was married in 2000, my daughter was born two years later, that was 2002, and my son was born two years after that, so that would be 2004." At that point, the pharmacist said, "Here it is, Mr. Langston, 3/17/05."

Okay, he was born two-and-a-half years later. I sheepishly replied, "Whatever you have in the computer is going to be right because my wife put it in." I am quick to put my dyslexia out there, which normally gives me a sense of control of the situation, but this incident stung a little because not only did it take me by surprise, it involved my child.

As painful as going through situations like these can feel, I always ask myself how they will affect me in the grand scheme of my life. The answer is almost always "not very much." What's the prognosis? I still got medical treatment, even with a whole page of misspelled words, and my children still love me, even if I cannot recall their birthdays on demand. A dose of perspective always helps me remember that dyslexia is a part of who I am but does not define who I am.

Two doctors' visits, two bouts with dyslexia, and one big dose of perspective allow me to happily live to fight another day.

Rob

My own helpful tips:

1. I keep my doctor's business card in my wallet, so I wrote the medicine I take and the medicine I am allergic to on the back of his card.
2. I asked my wife to write the children's birth dates with a Sharpie on their insurance cards.
3. I have also entered this information into my cell phone.

Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/power-dyslexic-thinking/201001/dyslexic-walks-doctors-office




Why become a Techno Dyslexic?

Why become a Techno Dyslexic?
Published on December 11, 2009 by Robert Langston

It is only appropriate that I start this blog by letting you know it is being posted from 30,000 feet in the air, on the Gogo in-flight internet. Yes - you and I, along with my computer and the Internet, are flying AirTran Airways from Los Angeles, California, to Atlanta, Georgia. Technology has come a long way, and the ability for dyslexics to utilize it has come just as far. The idea for this blog came to me as I was preparing for the trip to California last Saturday.

I was running around my house frantically looking for my Magellan RoadMate 700 portable GPS when it hit me. What would I do without my GPS system? For the past six years or so, I have been traveling approximately one hundred thousand miles per year to attend conferences, school assembly programs, and university lectures. My GPS has played a huge role in my being able to travel like this.

I go where my inspirational programs are needed. I board a plane, fly to my destination, and jump in a rental car. The first thing I do in the car is check the cigarette lighter, not because I smoke, because I don't, but because I have to plug in "my girl," who takes care of me on the roads and gets me to my destination. When she comes alive, it is like music to my ears: "Proceed to highlighted route," "Left turn in one mile," "Left turn now," and, yes, even "Whenever possible, make a legal U-turn" but eventually, I get to hear "You have arrived".

Most people love a little technological convenience in their lives, but for me as a dyslexic it is more than just a convenience. When that GPS box lights up, it is like a warm blanket telling me that I don't have to "literally" read the signs to get to where I am going. What a relief.

Before I got my first GPS nearly thirteen years ago, travel was brutal. I hated venturing outside the comfort zone of familiar roads. I knew that once I crossed that invisible line of knowing where I was, to depending on street signs, I was at the mercy of the streets. It was read or get lost.

I'm from the sprawling and mostly rural state of Georgia. Here, the jokes about "Go down to the Piggly Wiggly and turn right" are very real to me. In my comfort zone, I know where the "big oak tree" is and that I have to turn left there. When my occupation required me to travel across Georgia, however, and later throughout the whole United States, without my GPS the traveling could have been a deal breaker.

Before traveling with "my girl," travel was a nightmare, and I was a traffic disaster for myself and others. I was that fellow in the car almost at a dead stop at the green light, the one people would blow their horns at and give hand signals of encouragement to (you know the ones). But why was I doing this? I knew green meant go, but I couldn't read the street signs fast enough to know if that was my turn or not. You can't imagine how many times I have prayed for red lights and crawled through green lights. It became a joke. I would tell people that I had to leave early enough to "enjoy traffic." In Atlanta, I promise, there is plenty of traffic to "enjoy"!

What I found myself doing when driving, to compensate for dyslexia, was judging the general length of the words on the signs. When I was looking for a street name that was long, like Peachtree or International blvd, I would just ignore all the signs with short words, like Park or Main, on them. I could see the word was the right or wrong length long before I could read the actual word. I had learned that sounding out words at major intersections was not going to make me any new friends and just added to the overall stress of my travels. Navigating through life this way was no picnic.

Then I found "my girl," and today I find myself becoming more and more of a techno dyslexic. Although my Magellan RoadMate 700 is a clunky and oversized box compared to the ones currently on the market, "my girl" gets me where I am going, and I embrace her for it.

Likewise, I embrace other technologies that make reading and writing less evasive in my day to day life. I love the idea of voice recognition technology software, such as Dragon Naturally Speaking and Kurzweil 3000. I like that my spell check caught about fifty words I misspelled in this blog alone. I am excited to see how far technology has come in my lifetime, and I look forward to embracing new technologies, whether it's a new "girl" helping me in my travels or whatever else technology holds for the future.

I am a techno dyslexic, and I look forward to seeing you on the road.

Rob

Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/power-dyslexic-thinking/200912/why-become-techno-dyslexic




Dyslexics have good reason to love Garfield

Dyslexics have good reason to love Garfield
Published on January 24, 2010 by Robert Langston

I was packing to go out of town when my seven-year-old daughter asked, "Dad, where are you going?" I replied, "Paws." She then asked, "What is Paws?" and I told her, "It is where Jim Davis creates the Garfield comic strip." She gasped and exclaimed, "You're going to Garfield's house!"

My plane landed at the Indianapolis International Airport, where I met up with a group of people from the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation. We were going to Paws to facilitate the transition of SparkTop.org from the Schwab's Foundation to the Professor Garfield Foundation.

During the hour-and-half drive from Indianapolis to Muncie, I was trying to imagine what the corporate headquarters for the global icon Garfield would look like. After all, we were talking about Garfield, which is syndicated in 2,570 newspapers worldwide, is read by approximately two hundred and sixty-three million readers, and has won four Emmy Awards for Outstanding Animated Program. Guinness World Records named Garfield "The Most Widely Syndicated Comic Strip in the World." I was envisioning a large glass skyscraper with a twenty-foot-high bronze cat in the lobby.

During the last forty or so miles of the drive, all we could see around us were row crops. We were driving through the heartland of America, not corporate America. If our driver had not been paying very close attention, we would have missed our turn onto the little country road, next to a farmhouse, that would eventually bring us to Garfield's front door. Just when I was considering that we might have made a wrong turn, our driver announced, "Here we are."

The building was a combination of dark brown brick, light brown wood shingles, and glass. There was no large bronze cat to greet us, but it was apparent that we had arrived at "Garfield's house" by the five-foot round paw print in the bricks on the side of the building.

Inside, a Garfield figure greeted us, sitting on a park bench with his trademark grin. This was not the last we would see of this familiar feline. Something "Garfield" occupied every square foot of the building - from the boardroom, which was lined with countless awards, including the four Emmys, to the licensing room, which was filled with thousands of Garfield mugs, coats, clocks, collector plates, and more. The cafeteria we ate lunch in had a coin-operated Garfield kitty ride. Original art by Jim Davis hung on the walls, and every workspace of the more than twenty artists, writers, designers, web designers, sculptors, animators, and licensing business executives was adorned with Garfield items. This was truly the house that Garfield built.

I have had the pleasure of working with Jim Davis and his foundation for a little over a year now. The Professor Garfield Foundation is hoping to give credibility to the process of learning to read through reading comics. ProfessorGarfield.org is a wonderful site, and I highly recommend it. I also recommend SparkTop.org, the reason for my first visit to Paws.

SparkTop.org presents a unique blend of entertainment, technology, and information designed to nurture self-awareness, self-esteem, and self-advocacy among children with learning challenges. Targeting kids 8 to 12 years old, the site addresses several important areas in which they need support. Through an online community, kids can celebrate their hobbies, talk about their talents, and learn what other kids love doing. They can also create a music mix, write a poem, or draw a story - and share it with others. They can ask questions about learning disabilities, friends, or school - and get answers they can trust from people who know what they're going through. And they can turn to Dr. Bart, a learning disabilities expert, for tips on maximizing their learning strengths and managing their learning disabilities. SparkTop.org is free of charge, carries no advertising, and is fully compliant with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

As I prepared to end my "play date" at "Garfield's house," I realized there was more going on under this roof than just turning out the comic cat. Even though it was not the glass skyscraper I had originally envisioned, this quaint studio in rural Muncie was a lot bigger in scope than I had thought.

The last thing I noticed before walking out the door was a plain sign that simply read "Take care of the cat, and the cat will take care of you," and it is true. The cat is taking care to make a difference for kids, whether it is by teaching them to read through comics or by providing a safe haven for kids with learning challenges such as dyslexia. So, I say, "Take care of the cat because the cat is helping to take care of some very special kids."

When I arrived back home, my daughter asked me, "How was your trip to Garfield's house?" and I answered, "His house is amazing and a lot bigger than I thought."

Big Garfield fan,

Rob

Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/power-dyslexic-thinking/201001/dyslexics-have-good-reason-love-garfield




7 Ways to help dyslexic children succeed

7 Ways to help dyslexic children succeed
Published on February 7, 2010 by Robert Langston

7 Ways to help dyslexic children succeed

1. Full disclosure is the order of the day

It has been my experience that children want straight answers to what is happening with them and why. Educate yourself on dyslexia, and then share what you have learned with the child. If a child is left to his or her own devices to figure out what is wrong, the chances are what he or she comes up with will be worse than what is actually happening (i.e. 'I'm just stupid' or 'my brain is broken'). Educate yourself and your child to demystify the situation.
2. Reinforce strengths

The average child spends a tremendous amount of time mastering how to read and write. If a child has learning challenges, this time can become associated with struggle and defeat. It is critical that you find alternative ways for this child to experience success. Be attentive and aware; seek out the child's strengths and magnify them. Keep in mind that a child may look to you as a barometer of their overall worth. Remember that a child's strength may not always be a traditional strength like sports. It may be more unique, such as Lego construction or being a good friend to others.

3. Reading is hard work-- at least make it interesting

Dyslexic children might not like the reading process but they can really like the content. Finding passages that relate to the child's interests can make the experience more enjoyable. For example: If a child has an affinity for All Terrain Vehicles (ATV's) then take pages from ATV magazines and watch the motivation levels rise.

4. Provide current role models

Everyone has seen the black and white picture of Albert Einstein with his hair standing on end that has been associated with dyslexia. I feel it is harder for children today to draw self-confidence from someone who died in the 1950's, even though he is a great role model. Give them modern-day dyslexic role models: Orlando Bloom, Jackie Chan, McDreamy himself, Patrick Dempsey, and don't forget some ladies too: Selma Hayek, Jewel, Whoopi Goldberg. Keeping it current can keep it real for children.

5. Assistive technology

Buying a child with dyslexia a computer is not giving them assistive technology. Adding Dragon Naturally Speaking or Kurzweil 3000 and working with them until they master using the voice recognition software is a step in the right direction. Let's face it. For dyslexics, the ability to have your computer read an email aloud and transcribe your response is an assistive technology home run. I'm not saying to stop trying to teach your child to read. A good balance of hard work and help can ensure betterproductivity in school and life.

6. Multi-sensory approach to learning at school or home

There are schools which I refer to in The Power of Dyslexic Thinking as 'pockets of greatness.' These are schools around the country that use a multi-sensory approach to teach children with learning challenges. If you cannot afford to send a child to schools such as Churchill Center & School in Missouri or Currey Ingram Academy in Tennessee then maybe you can find local tutors trained in the same methods that these schools use. Some of these methods include the Orton-Gillingham, Slingerland Approach or Wilson Reading System. Look online for local tutor-locating search engines.

7. Provide accommodations

Early intervention provides the greatest chance of success in reading fluency. Remember that preserving a child's self esteem intact is the most important factor in his or her surviving and thriving in the classroom and life. For this, I offer the accommodation list I used myself: Oral test-taking, classroom note-takers, people reading written assignments onto a recorder, audio books and un-timed test-taking. Focus on what it will take for a child to learn in his or her class tomorrow and you both will live to read another day.

In service to children,

Rob

The article you just read was a contribution I made to SheKnows.com. To see the article on SheKnows.com click this link 7 Ways to help dyslexic children succeed

Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/power-dyslexic-thinking/201002/7-ways-help-dyslexic-children-succeed




Overcoming Dyslexia

Overcoming Dyslexia
By Betsy Morris Reporter Associate Lisa Munoz Research Associate Patricia Neering
May 13, 2002

(FORTUNE Magazine) – Consider the following four dead-end kids.

One was spanked by his teachers for bad grades and a poor attitude. He dropped out of school at 16. Another failed remedial English and came perilously close to flunking out of college. The third feared he'd never make it through school--and might not have without a tutor. The last finally learned to read in third grade, devouring Marvel comics, whose pictures provided clues to help him untangle the words.

These four losers are, respectively, Richard Branson, Charles Schwab, John Chambers, and David Boies. Billionaire Branson developed one of Britain's top brands with Virgin Records and Virgin Atlantic Airways. Schwab virtually created the discount brokerage business. Chambers is CEO of Cisco. Boies is a celebrated trial attorney, best known as the guy who beat Microsoft.

In one of the stranger bits of business trivia, they have something in common: They are all dyslexic. So is billionaire Craig McCaw, who pioneered the cellular industry; John Reed, who led Citibank to the top of banking; Donald Winkler, who until recently headed Ford Financial; Gaston Caperton, former governor of West Virginia and now head of the College Board; Paul Orfalea, founder of Kinko's; Diane Swonk, chief economist of Bank One. The list goes on (see table, "Dyslexic Achievers"). Many of these adults seemed pretty hopeless as kids. All have been wildly successful in business. Most have now begun to talk about their dyslexia as a way to help children and parents cope with a condition that is still widely misunderstood. "This is very painful to talk about, even today," says Chambers. "The only reason I am talking about it is 100% for the kids and their parents."

What exactly is dyslexia? The Everyman definition calls it a reading disorder in which people jumble letters, confusing dog with god, say, or box with pox. The exact cause is unclear; scientists believe it has to do with the way a developing brain is wired. Difficulty reading, spelling, and writing are typical symptoms. But dyslexia often comes with one or more other learning problems as well, including trouble with math, auditory processing, organizational skills, and memory. No two dyslexics are alike--each has his own set of weaknesses and strengths. About 5% to 6% of American public school children have been diagnosed with a learning disability; 80% of the diagnoses are dyslexia-related. But some studies indicate that up to 20% of the population may have some degree of dyslexia (see box, "How to Help").

A generation ago this was a problem with no name. Boies, Schwab, and Bill Samuels Jr., the president of Maker's Mark, did not realize they were dyslexic until some of their own children were diagnosed with the disorder, which is often inherited. Samuels says he was sitting in a school office, listening to a description of his son's problems, when it dawned on him: "Oh, shoot. That's me." Most of the adults FORTUNE talked to had diagnosed themselves. Says Branson: "At some point, I think I decided that being dyslexic was better than being stupid."

Stupid. Dumb. Retard. Dyslexic kids have heard it all. According to a March 2000 Roper poll, almost two-thirds of Americans still associate learning disabilities with mental retardation. That's probably because dyslexics find it so difficult to learn through conventional methods. "It is a disability in learning," says Boies. "It is not an intelligence disability. It doesn't mean you can't think."

He's right. Dyslexia has nothing to do with IQ; many smart, accomplished people have it, or are thought to have had it, including Winston Churchill and Albert Einstein. Sally Shaywitz, a leading dyslexia neuroscientist at Yale, believes the disorder can carry surprising talents along with its well-known disadvantages. "Dyslexics are overrepresented in the top ranks of people who are unusually insightful, who bring a new perspective, who think out of the box," says Shaywitz. She is co-director of the Center for Learning and Attention at Yale, along with her husband, Dr. Bennett Shaywitz, a professor of pediatrics and neurology.

Dyslexics don't outgrow their problems--reading and writing usually remain hard work for life--but with patient teaching and deft tutoring, they do learn to manage. Absent that, dyslexia can snuff out dreams at an early age, as children lose their way in school, then lose their self-esteem and drive. "The prisons are filled with kids who can't read," says Caperton. "I suspect a lot of them have learning disabilities."

Dyslexia is a crucible, particularly in a high-pressure society that allows so little room for late bloomers. "People are either defeated by it or they become much more tenacious," says McCaw. Don Winkler, a top financial services executive at Bank One and then at Ford Motor, remembers coming home from school bloodied by fights he'd had with kids who called him dumb. Kinko's founder, Paul Orfalea, failed second grade and spent part of third in a class of mentally retarded children. He could not learn to read, despite the best efforts of parents who took him to testers, tutors, therapists, special reading groups, and eye doctors. As young classmates read aloud, Orfalea says it was as if "angels whispered words in their ears."

In his unpublished autobiography, Orfalea says that to a dyslexic, a sentence is worse than Egyptian hieroglyphics. "It's more like a road map with mouse holes or coffee stains in critical places. You're always turning into blind alleys and ending up on the wrong side of town." He finally graduated, but not before being "invited to leave...practically every high school in Los Angeles." One principal counseled his mother to enroll him in trade school, suggesting that Orfalea could become a carpet layer. His mother went home and tearfully told her husband, "I just know he can do more than lay carpet."

Charles Schwab was very strong in math, science, and sports (especially golf), which helped him get into Stanford. But anything involving English "was a disconnect." He couldn't write quickly enough to capture his thoughts. He couldn't listen to a lecture and take legible notes. He couldn't memorize four words in a row. He doesn't think he ever read a novel all the way through in high school. He was within one unit of flunking out of Stanford his freshman year. "God, I must just be really dumb in this stuff," he used to tell himself. "It was horrible, a real drag on me." So horrible that Schwab and his wife, Helen, created a foundation to help parents of children with learning disorders.

It was as if Schwab and the others were wearing a scarlet letter: D for dumb. Until about five years ago Chambers kept his dyslexia a secret. As CEO, he says, "you don't want people to see your weaknesses." One day a little girl at Cisco's Bring Your Children to Work Day forced him out of the closet. Chambers had called on her, and she was trying to ask a question before a crowd of 500 kids and parents. But she couldn't get the words out. "I have a learning disability," she said tearfully.

Chambers cannot tell this story without choking up himself. "You could immediately identify with what that was like," he says. "You know that pain. She started to leave, and you knew how hurt she was in front of the group and her parents." Chambers threw her a lifeline. "I have a learning disability too," he said. In front of the crowd, he began talking to her as if they were the only two people in the room. "You've just got to learn your way through it," Chambers told her. "Because there are some things you can do that others cannot, and there are some things others can do you're just not going to be able to do, ever. Now my experience has been that what works is to go a little bit slower...."

It was the kind of coaching that proved crucial to nearly everybody we talked to: mentors who took a genuine interest, parents who refused to give up, tutors who didn't even know what dyslexia was. Winkler recalls that his parents refused to let their fear of electrocution stand in the way of his fixing every iron and toaster in the neighborhood. "I wired every teacher's house," he says. "I got shocked all the time." His parents owned a mom-and-pop shop in Phillipsburg, N.J. His mother cleaned houses to pay for his tutoring. Chambers, who read right to left and up and down the page, says his parents, both doctors, claim they never once doubted his abilities, even though "I absolutely did." His parents' faith was important to him. So was his tutor, Mrs. Anderson. Even today Chambers remembers tutoring as excruciating: "It might have been once or twice a week," he says, "but it felt like every day." Nonetheless, he adds, "Mrs. Anderson had an influence on my life far bigger than she might have ever realized."

If you could survive childhood, dyslexia was a pretty good business boot camp. It fostered risk taking, problem solving, resilience. School was a chess game that required tactical brilliance. Schwab sat mostly in the back of the room. But he was conscientious and charming, and gutsy enough to ask for extra help. Boies took a minimum of math and avoided foreign languages and anything involving spatial skills. Orfalea worked out a symbiotic relationship with classmates on a group project at USC's Marshall Business School; they did the writing, he did the photocopying (and got the germ of the idea that led to Kinko's).

At Vanderbilt Law School, Samuels spent a lot of time in study-group discussions. "That's how I learned the cases," he says. His friends helped with the reading; he paid for the beer. Better than most people, dyslexics learn humility and how to get along with others. It's probably no accident that Kinko's, Cisco, and Schwab have all been on FORTUNE's list of the best places to work. "I never put people down, because I know what that feels like," says Branson, who seldom asks for a resume either, "because I haven't got one myself."

By the time these guys got into business, they had picked themselves up so many times that risk taking was second nature. "We're always expecting a curve ball," says Samuels. Schwab remembers how hard it was to watch his friends receive awards and become "General Motors Scholars, Merit Scholars, Baker Scholars. I was so jealous," he says. Later on, though, some of the prizewinners had trouble dealing with adversity.

If, as kids, the dyslexic executives had learned the downside of their disorder inside out, as adults they began to see its upside: a distinctly different way of processing information that gave them an edge in a volatile, fast-moving world. Bill Dreyer, an inventor and a biologist at Caltech, recalls a dinner-party conversation years ago in which he told a colleague how his dyslexic brain works: "I think in 3-D Technicolor pictures instead of words." "You what?" replied the incredulous colleague. The two argued the rest of the night about how that was possible.

Dreyer believes that thinking in pictures enabled him to develop groundbreaking theories about how antibodies are made, and then to invent one of the first protein-sequencing machines, which helped to launch the human genome revolution. "I was able to see the machine in my head and rotate valves and actually see the instrumentation," he says. "I don't think of dyslexia as a deficiency. It's like having CAD [computer-aided design] in your brain. I bet these other guys see business in 3-D too. I bet they see graphs and charts of how trends will unfold."

In his office, Chambers goes from wounded to animated as he heads to the dry-erase board to show that's exactly what he does. "I can't explain why, but I just approach problems differently," he says. "It's very easy for me to jump conceptually from A to Z. I picture a chess game on a multiple-layer dimensional cycle and almost play it out in my mind. But it's not a chess game. It's business. I don't make moves one at a time. I can usually anticipate the potential outcome and where the Y's in the road will occur." As he's talking, he's scrawling a grid depicting how Cisco diversified into switches, fiber optics, and wireless by acquisition, internal development, or partnering. It was a picture he used to explain his vision to the board of directors back in 1993, when he was an executive vice president and Cisco was a one-product company. It became a road map. "All we did was fill in the chart," he says.

Barely pausing, he's drawing again, this time a picture showing the evolution of networking, including the commoditization of telephone services. He first drew this picture in 1995. "I'm not always right," he says. He did not foresee the extent of last year's economic downturn or the subsequent collapse in demand. "But we knew there would be industry consolidation and a chance for us to break away."

Like Chambers, Schwab fast-forwards past the smaller, logical steps of sequential thinkers. "Many times I can see a solution to something and synthesize things differently and quicker than other people," he says. In meetings, "I would see the end zone and say, 'This is where we need to go.' " This annoys sequential thinkers, he says, because it shortcuts their "rigorous step-by-step process."

Diane Swonk's former boss and mentor at Bank One always thought Swonk had a "third eye." Swonk, an economist, says it's dyslexia. Although she has worked in the same building for 16 years, she still has a hard time figuring out which track her commuter train is on and which way to turn when she leaves the office elevator. She can't dial telephone numbers. She has a hard time with arithmetic, reversing and transposing numbers.

But she revels in higher-level math concepts, and in January 1999, when almost everyone was bemoaning the global financial crisis and fretting about the stock market--then trading at around 9300--she told the Executives Club of Chicago that the Dow would break 11,000 by year-end. The prediction seemed so surprising that the moderator made her repeat it. She was right then and right again last year, when she insisted--even after Sept. 11--that the economic downturn would not be as bad as feared. Why not? Because consumers would keep spending. Which they did. "I'm not in the consensus a lot," says Swonk. "In fact, being in the consensus makes me really uncomfortable."

Sometimes dyslexics are utterly incapable of seeing things the way others do. Craig McCaw could not understand conventional wisdom that said cellphones would never amount to much. "To me it just seemed completely obvious that if you could find a way not to be tethered to a six-foot cord in a five-by-nine office, you'd take it. Maybe if your mind isn't cluttered with too much information, some things are obvious." McCaw built the first almost-nationwide cellular company, which he sold to AT&T in 1994 for $11.5 billion. Now he's trying to build a global satellite system to make the Internet as pervasive and portable as cellphones--another seemingly impossible feat.

Bill Samuels Jr. couldn't see the improbability of turning tiny Maker's Mark into a national brand in 1975, even though bourbon sales were in a decade-long slump. "I can't write," says Samuels, "but I can organize old information into a different pattern easily." The old pattern was to advertise to the trade. The new one: to bypass both the trade and Madison Avenue with homespun ads to consumers that Samuels wrote himself. Within ten years Maker's Mark had become "perhaps the most fervently sought bourbon in the U.S.," according to Ad Age. "Many times in business, different is better than better," says Samuels. "And we dyslexics do different without blinking an eye."

David Boies turned dyslexic deficits into advantages. Because of his difficulty reading from a script, he makes an outline of his basic points and commits it to memory. Then, unlike trial lawyers who work from a script, he is free to improvise. That enables him to be more dramatic, more flexible. He can break the cardinal rule of cross-examination, which is never to ask a question if you don't know the answer (it messes up the script). He can wander around themes, trap witnesses. "It cuts down on the time the witness has to think and predict where you're going," says Boies.

On a recent trip to Boston, Richard Branson arrives in a spray of champagne to open a Virgin Megastore. He is a true business celebrity, having come straight from hosting a party in London celebrating the honorary knighthood of Rudy Giuliani (Sir Richard, too, is a knight) and going later that evening to address the blue-blood Chief Executives' Club of Boston.

Branson's success and his dyslexia seem like such a disconnect. He never made it through high school. He has a wickedly unreliable memory; because his mind goes blank at the most inopportune times, he writes important things--like names--in black ink on the back of his hand. He won't use a computer. He's terrible at math. Until recently, he confesses, he was still confusing gross profit with net. He'd been faking it, but not too well. One of his board members finally pulled him aside to give him a mnemonic, or memory aid, which often comes in handy for dyslexics. Pretend you're fishing, the board member said. Net is all the fish in your net at the end of the year. Gross is that plus everything that got away.

Branson approaches business completely differently from most. "I never, ever thought of myself as a businessman," he tells the Boston CEOs. "I was interested in creating things I would be proud of." He started Virgin Atlantic because flying other airlines was so dreadful. He knew he could provide better service. There's an irony here, says Branson: "Look, if I'd been good at math, I probably never would have started an airline."

Branson is not the only dyslexic CEO who has tried to bluff his way through problems. For years, Orfalea says, "I was a closet bad reader...I never showed anybody my handwriting until I was in my 40s." He cultivated a casual, can't-be-bothered-with-it management style that allowed him to avoid the written word. If he received a long letter, for instance, "I'd just hand it to somebody else and say, 'Here, read it.' " He mostly avoided the corporate office and instead went from Kinko's to Kinko's, observing, talking to customers, making changes. He wasn't goofing off; he was vacuuming up information in his own way--orally, visually, multisensorily.

For most dyslexic business leaders, reading is still not easy. They tend to like newspapers, short magazine articles, summaries. Says Chambers: "Short reading is fine. But long reading I just really labor over." His staff knows to deliver summaries in three pages or less, the major points highlighted in yellow. McCaw says he can read and write. "But to do either requires a lot of energy and concentration." He and the others are information grazers. "You learn for self-preservation to grasp the maximum amount of meaning out of the minimal amount of context," says McCaw, describing his reading like this: "You don't really view the piece of paper. You scan. You may pull something out of it," all the while alternating between "apparent disinterest and maniacal focus." Once McCaw makes short work of the short stack of papers in his in-box, they disappear. When government investigators asked to see his files during a routine antitrust inquiry in 1985, there were none. "Craig and a piece of paper do not remain together for very long," his COO told the investigators.

Boies calls dyslexia "primarily an input problem." He is highly selective about the information he takes in and constantly makes judgments about what's most important: the five or ten most relevant cases, the key points in those cases. Always, always, Boies says, he's looking at the big picture, at how the story will end. "You are always trying to figure out where something's going--to put it in context," he says. "It's harder to just read it straight." Seeing the big picture early on may be the dyslexic's best shortcut: If you know where you're going, you can figure out how to get there. "One of the things dyslexics do is learn to get the big picture, to grasp things very quickly rather than seeing the itty-bitty part," says Shaywitz. "They have no choice. It's a survival skill. But I've been struck by the perceptions and relationships they're able to see."

Dyslexics learn to soak up information in other ways than print. "When you're not focusing, you're grabbing at the abstract information in the atmosphere," says McCaw. "You don't even know where it comes from. But the receptors are highly reactive because they're trying to overcome what we'll call the lack of reading input." Schwab learned the plots and characters of Moby-Dick, A Tale of Two Cities, and other great books by reading Classic comics, which told the stories in pictures. Chambers prefers voicemail to e-mail because "it's so much easier for me to understand and visualize by hearing." Boies flourished in law school (Yale, magna cum laude) in part because he could learn by listening. "We all associate reading with knowledge and wisdom," he says. "But the Socratic Dialogues are dialogues. Teaching tools. There is a difference between knowledge and the means of acquiring knowledge."

Managing dyslexia is a lifelong effort. Winkler, who now teaches a leadership course at the University of Michigan Business School, starts his day with brain exercises he calls Wink's Warm-Ups. Sometimes he uses multiplication and division flash cards. Other mornings he practices "trigger" words, like "won't" or "didn't," that confuse him. The College Board's Caperton says he almost always has to redial phone numbers, often more than once. Swonk rechecks her calculations five times.

Chambers relies on his wife, Elaine, to help him navigate a phone book. He's terrible with written directions. He'll never forget the wild ride he gave Tom Ridge one night. Ridge, then governor of Pennsylvania, had come to Silicon Valley on an economic development mission. After the event, he asked Chambers for a ride to the restaurant where they were to have dinner. "I thought, 'Oh, no!' " says Chambers. He knew immediately that he would get lost. Sure enough, he led Ridge and an entourage of police escorts on a wild goose chase, crossing lanes and stopping at not one but two gas stations for directions. The next day he bought a GPS. "I can laugh about it now," says Chambers.

The Cisco CEO does something else every successful business leader should do, but often doesn't: He builds a team to shore up his weaknesses. "I will not spend as much time on individual details," Chambers says, so he hires detail people "who are able to go A to B, B to C, and to take the components apart." McCaw says dyslexics need a translator "who can take that conceptual or intuitive idea and get it into a form that's usable." Because he's more conceptual than analytical, he needs someone who can communicate with people who are the opposite. "One on one, you just drive them crazy," he says. "You come up with a pronouncement, and you have no facts to back it up. It just irritates the daylights out of them. You really need a translator with a foot in both camps."

At Maker's Mark, Samuels surrounds himself with "very verbal people who like to communicate what they're doing." Even his production vice president and his CFO--positions that don't normally attract chatty types--are that way because, he says, "I knew I'd have to find people who would tolerate my need to be talked to a lot." Orfalea recalls that his mother used to console him by saying that when everybody grows up, "the A students work for the B students. The C students run the businesses. And the D students dedicate the buildings."

Possible clues to the differences between A students and dyslexics can be seen under a microscope at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Some of the most interesting research on the disorder occurs here and at the Shaywitzes' Yale center. In Glen Rosen's Harvard lab, a slide shows how dark clouds of neurons have strayed from their normal path, probably during fetal development, and ended up in tiny clumps called ectopias (ectopia is Greek for "out of place"). Rosen, an associate professor of neurology, theorizes that the wandering neurons cause a "cascade of connectional differences" in brain wiring. Because the ectopias prevent some nerve fibers from going where they should, they migrate at random, wiring regions of the brain not normally connected. Scientists believe this might explain why no two dyslexics are alike and why one, like Branson, might be terrible at math but a good writer, and why another, like Schwab, might be quite the opposite.

Researchers used to think that many more boys than girls were dyslexic. (Schools were identifying four times as many boys as girls a decade ago.) But an ongoing study at Yale of 400 Connecticut children indicates that the numbers are about equal. The Shaywitzes believe that most discrepancies in diagnosis are social: Dyslexic girls tend to behave better and work harder than dyslexic boys, and therefore often escape detection.

Magnetic-resonance imaging at the Yale lab has shed new light on how the brain works, bolstering the belief that dyslexics have difficulty decoding the smallest meaningful segments of language, called phonemes. (The word "cat" has three phonemes: kuh, aah, and tuh.) When dyslexic subjects are asked to sound out words, MRI technology, by measuring blood flow, shows relatively less activity in the back of the brain and more activity in the front. In good readers, most of the activity occurs in the back of the brain.

Despite all the unknowns, dyslexia is clearly better understood and treated today than it was a generation ago. Yet in a high-pressure society where straight A's and high test scores count for so much, the disorder still carries a heavy penalty. Boies says nothing has been harder for him than watching the struggles of two of his own children who are dyslexic. "It is awful. Awful. The most difficult thing I've ever done," he says. One of the boys is in high school. The other graduated from Hamilton College summa cum laude and from Yale Law School--despite childhood testing, recalls Boies, that "was not very optimistic in terms of what he would be able to accomplish." Boies wishes that society allowed more room and more time for late bloomers. "In this environment," he says, "you get children who think they are masters of the universe, and children who think they are failures, when they're 10 years old. They're both wrong. And neither is well served by that misconception."

Where would we be, after all, if the bar had been set so high that none of these guys--not Schwab, not Chambers, not Boies, not Branson, not Dreyer, not McCaw--could have cleared it?

Source: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2002/05/13/322876/index.htm