Kayleen West. Fine Art & Creative Coaching

Dyslexia Empowerment Week and helping dyslexic children to enjoy literacy by incorporating dyslexic friendly font in my picture book, Celia and Nonna.

Dyslexia Empowerment Week – books for dyslexic kids

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by

Kayleen
in

SPELD supports Helpful Books at Dyslexia Empowerment Week Gathering

We’re celebrating Dyslexia Empowerment Week and helping dyslexic children to enjoy literacy by incorporating dyslexic friendly font in my picture book, Celia and Nonna.

Dyslexia Empowerment Week is next week. This is bound to bring more awareness to dyslexia here in Australia. Myself and the author of my new picture book, Celia and Nonna (Victoria Lane) have been in correspondence with SPELD and they have been extremely supportive and excited about us using the dyslexic font in the book. Hopefully other mainstream publishers take direction from my publisher in the future and open up more books for kids with dyslexia.

There is no back story as to why I chose to use the font. I have no family member with Dyslexia, but I do have a heart of adoption and want as many children to enjoy reading as possible. In every project I am mindful of any way I can use my gifts or opportunities to bless others. I saw this as an opportunity to do just that. I also met a girl in her early twenties recently who told me so struggled all her life to learn and only just found out she has dyslexia. I am becoming more aware of the lack of awareness in this area. I am trying to do a little to assist.

I have a real heart for literacy for all and encourage a love of books. When I saw the opportunity to use a font that may help some children with dyslexia read more easily, I jumped at it. Fortunately, my wonderful publisher Paul Collin from Ford Street was also keen to adopt the font in an effort to include more children.

I will be attending the walk for Dyslexia on Sunday 19th October and would love to meet any of you lovely people there too. Check this page for all events on for Dyslexia Empowerment Week.

Dyslexia Empowerment Week Melbourne.
Dyslexia Empowerment Week Melbourne.

Dyslexic Support Groups on Facebook

Below are the link to the Australian dyslexic group I have been frequenting.  They have loads of helpful posts and support for anyone with dyslexia or with children with dyslexia. I haven’t joined any international groups as yet, but of course that is always an option.

Dyslexia Homeschool Australia
Dyslexia Support Australia
Dyslexia Melbourne Support Group
Defy Dyslexia Australia
Dyslexia Sydney Support Group

Parent Feedback

I have had encouraging feedback from parents and educators about the Open Dyslexic Font used in the book. One lady wrote:

Hi Kayleen,

My child is dyslexic and we use the font at home, problem is that there is not one worksheet at school is open dyslexic font or one school book so my child has to learn to cope with all these other fonts…even though I have given it to the school in years past it is too hard to convert all the existing fonts on the worksheets over to open dyslexic. But I find my child reads quicker and more accurately with open dyslexic font – it just seems easier not to get confused with the weighting of the letters.

Cheers

Lo

Download Open Dyslexic Font Free

To download the free font to use or for more information on Open Dyslexia visit their page here: http://opendyslexic.org/

And finally the book:

Celia and Nonna. Picture books about grandparent and child.
Celia and Nonna. Picture books using Open Dyslexic font

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