About 10% of adults in the UK have some form of Dyslexia. This leaps to 20% amongst entrepreneurs - so there are about 30,000 entrepreneurs in Scotland with Dyslexia.
It's thought that people with Dyslexia may have greater talents for guiding innovative development and using problem solving skills, giving them a competitive edge in business. So we're talking Jamie Oliver, Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison and Richard Branson amongst many others. Yup.
Bert McGlone, the Academy's Learning Manager, has a Great-Nephew who has struggled at school but now, at 10 years old, is showing a huge variety of skills not associated with reading and writing - including running full school assemblies about Dyslexia.
This is also highly relevant to social enterprise - whether it's through setting one up in school and engaging pupils who struggle as Bert's great-nephew has, or through the necessary grit and resilience developed early in life that carries entrepreneurs through the challenges of running social businesses.
At the Academy we've found there to be a significant number of social entrepreneurs with Dyslexia and so we have tried to make our materials much better suited to them. On programmes our starting point is understanding the different learning styles of people in the room. Our approach aims to enable people with non-academic learning styles to benefit as much others, alongside developing multiple intelligences (such as emotional intelligence) through practice.
Here are a few ways everyone can be more Dyslexia-friendly:
1. Produce materials that are easier to read >>
2. Create a Dyslexia-aware workplace >>
3. Learn more about Dyslexia >>
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