Dear Dyslexic Podcast

Diagnosed with Dyslexia, Dyspraxia and Irlen Syndrome, Elizabeth set up this charitable organisation. She has also recently been diagnosed with Dyscalculia. After identifying a gap in support services, She took it upon herself to support adults with Dyslexia and other specific learning difficulties, who want to start their own business, go back to further education or improve their employability skills.

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"I felt I needed to help other Dyslexics who may be struggling within the education and self employment system or within the work place."

Trevor Watts brings a common sense approach and the experience of a small business owner to his role representing the people of Toowoomba North. Like countless other residents across Toowoomba, Trevor’s life before politics was focused on running his successful local business whilst juggling the demands of an active family and community life on the Darling Downs.

Trevor often met with politicians, including the then Senator, now Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce to discuss issues impacting business owners and families in Toowoomba.

During one of these meetings a critical moment in Trevor’s life occurred when he was again lobbying Senator Joyce on another policy issue. Barnaby turned to Trevor and said ‘Well, what are you going to do about it? I think it’s time for you to put up or shut up.’

Trevor saw huge opportunities for Toowoomba, Highfields and the Darling Downs. He understood the important need for strong regional voices in parliament who fight for a fair go for the people outside the state’s capital. Trevor decided to throw his hat in the ring. After an initial attempt in 2009, Trevor was elected as the Representative for Toowoomba North in March 2012 and was re-elected in January 2015.

Trevor has fought for and delivered many project in his short time in Parliament, including the Toowoomba Second Range Crossing and The Highfields State Secondary College.

Eleanor is a Professor of Information Technology and Data Science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the Robert A. Foisie School of Business.

She is the Founder and Director of the ​Inclusive Design and Accessibility (IDEA) Hub at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, which was established in 2018 to address the needs of people with differing abilities across technologies and environments. Her research expertise centers on the intersection of technology and the user. Over the past 20 years, she has focused on how people feel about the technology they use and how technologies, such as mobile apps and social media, can improve users’ experiences.

Shae is so excited to launch this interview talking about neurodiversity in the workplace.

Did you know that betwwen 20% to 40% of those in the justice system have a learning disability? That’s a global statistic and a disturbing one. Being literate is a basic human right and no one should end up in the justice system because they have low literacy skills or because they have dyslexia. Growing up on the streets of New Orleans, Ameer Baraka found himself in constant trouble with the law, which eventually led to his incarceration. During that time, he was diagnosed with dyslexia through resilience and determination he turned his life around. He is now an author, activist and actor working to empower young people and adults with dyslexia with a focus on supporting those who have had contact with the corrections system.Shae is so excited to launch this interview at the end of National Dyslexia Awareness Month, following her presentation at the Australasian Corrections Education Conference.

Assistive technology plays such a significant role in the lives of those with dyslexia although Shae still gets lost using google maps. In this podcast, Shae speaks with Jack Churchill, with Co-Founder and CEO of Scanning Pens.

Jack is passionate about technology being a great enabler. He is determined to help young people and adults with dyslexia obtain greater access to assistive technology both in their everyday lives and exams. He sits on the board of BATA (the British Assistive Technology Association), St Mary’s Calne School and the International Churchill Society. Jack has a BSc (Hons) in Publishing & Information Systems and lives in Wiltshire in England with his wife, Charlotte and three children. Jack is proud to be the CEO and co-founder of Scanning Pens. Twitter handle: @jackthetweet

About Scanning Pens:

Scanning Pens give students the confidence to read independently.  They provide reading aids for those with Special Educational Needs/ SpLD as well as those wishing to improve their literacy. Scanning Pens is the world’s leading supplier of pen scanners, their ExamReader scanner is approved by many leading exam boards.  The sister product the ReaderPen includes dictionaries and voice & data storage, making it an all round tool for supporting learning.  Scanning Pens have offices in the UK, US, Canada, Australia & India and are proud to push a positive dyslexia message through their campaign #SucceedWithDyslexia.  For more info visit https://www.scanningpens.com/

Shae really hopes you enjoy this fantastic podcast.

In this podcast, Shae speaks with Christian Boer the creator of Dyslexie font. Christian has been affected by dyslexia as long as he can remember, this experience inspired him to design a solution to improve readability for people with dyslexia – the Dyslexie font. Christian combined his graphic design skill with his dyslexia, abandoning traditional typeface design rules, favouring instead the user needs of a dyslexic person.

Christian dreams of the day when being able to use Dyslexie font won’t be an exception; but at everyone’s disposal, just like any other font. He hopes to change the negative image – that dyslexia is a shortcoming – and emphasize the positive sides of dyslexia, such as creativity and 3-dimensional visual thinking.

Shae really hopes you enjoy this exciting podcast about creativity and teh lived experience of dyslexia.

Mother and son duo Zivit and Gili Inbar join Shae for this month’s episode of the Dear Dyslexic Podcast to talk about their dyslexic experiences as a family and the trials and tribulations of finishing secondary school.

Gili Inbar is a 19-year-old Commerce Law student majoring in Finance at university. He has a keen interest in business, politics and entrepreneurship, and would like to someday be the owner of his own business. Gili is a dyslexic advocate presenting his lived experience of dyslexia at Parliament House in Canberra. Dr Zivit Inbar is the founder and CEO of DifferenThinking, a consulting practice that specialises in people, culture, leadership & performance strategies for growth with particular expertise in Technology companies, Start-ups, and Venture Capitals. Zivit has over 17 years of experience and expertise with building high-performance teams, driving high-level strategies and processes at the board and executive levels, spanning private and listed local and global organisations (China, APAC, Europe and the US).

Zivit is an Adjunct Professor at Deakin University’s MBA program, a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and a Fellow Certified member of the Australian Human Resources Institute. She is the author of “The Ethical Kaleidoscope: Values, Ethics, and Corporate Governance” (with Doug Long), 2017, Routledge Publishing, UK.

Paul Russell has been in classrooms for over thirty years, so it isn’t really that surprising that all of his heroes are teachers. He has always been passionate about stories, even before he could read. Determine never to grow up and lose his imagination he is a teacher, playwright, father, artist and author but maybe not always in that order. He is passionate about children’s literacy and in building an appetite within children for the written word and sharing stories.

Shae hopes you enjoy this inspirational podcast of how dyslexia success can look!

Jemima Hutton 2019 Dear Dyslexic Foundation Leadership Award Recipient

Jemima is a diagnosed dyslexic student who is currently studying Provisional Entry Medicine at the University of the Queensland. She has been assessed as being in the lowest 2% for reading with her eyes, however, she received an ATAR of 99.3 for her secondary school studies including two perfect scores. Jemima was Dux of her school and also ironically received the English Prize for being the top student even though she only ever read the books with her ears, using assistive technology at 3 times normal speed.

After taking a gap year, Jemima started her own company called Dyslexia Demystified to support and empower young people with dyslexia. She has presented keynotes to students, teachers and parents at more than 40 different schools around Victoria and Queensland and made her international debut in Japan at the Asia Pacific Dyslexia Festival in 2018. In order to reach more young people like herself and build an online community of proud dyslexics, Jemima started a YouTube Channel, which she hopes will grow to be the largest online support platform for dyslexic young people.

Shae hope's you enjoy this podcast with Jemima an inspiration for all young people.

Dyslexic & Serial Entrepreneur, Hugo has been involved in many different projects over the past four years in France, UK and Australia all of which use artificial intelligence.  These projects include the application of image recognition and natural language processing techniques to various real-world problems.

Being dyslexic and dysgraphic himself, Hugo knows a lot about the struggle of learning disorders. His experience in Artificial Intelligence started 4 years ago after multiple jobs including a top 500 company in the UK to small startups. Hugo’s analytic mind allows us to bring Dystech Australia toward its goal with first-hand knowledge of dyslexia and dyspraxia.

In this podcast, we talk all things Artificial Intelligence and how this technology can help to screen children and young people for dyslexia.

I hope you enjoy this interview, it was really interesting speaking to Hugo about his personal experiences of dyslexia and how like so many of us, he is trying to change the world, one dyslexic step at a time.