Dyslexia in academia

Dyslexia: An Often Misunderstood Challenge

Dyslexia is often thought of as a simple reading or letter-confusion problem, but it’s actually far more complex. It’s a neurodevelopmental condition that affects not only reading and spelling but also working memory, the ability to conceptualize time and space, and even the ability to concentrate on multiple tasks at once.

In the research world, these challenges can be especially heavy: reading constantly, writing, synthesizing documents, comparing texts, meeting deadlines, and managing repetitive experimental protocols. Yet, it’s important to remember that people with dyslexia often develop remarkable strengths, such as highly developed visual thinking, an innovative mindset, creativity in finding solutions, and an ability to connect distant ideas. These are invaluable qualities in scientific research and problem-solving.

Here I'm sharing my testimony as well as a few tips for dyslexic students and researchers, but also if you have to supervise someone dyslexic.

Dyslexia is a constant battle: not only to compensate for the real challenges it brings, but also to confront others’ judgments and misunderstandings. Recognizing this reality, offering tailored support, breaking down prejudices, and making research more inclusive is essential.
Because, in truth, it’s often the most atypical minds that drive science forward.

Dyslexia isn’t just about reading and spelling

It also affects how I perceive and manage time and space.

As a child, I struggled to differentiate between morning and afternoon. Even as an adult, I don't intuitively picture what is two days compared to two weeks. In research, that’s a problem because you constantly juggle precise deadlines (like “Friday, June 10th”), which can be confusing: there are multiple Fridays in a month, and “June” and “July” look similar, also 10/06 can easily be mistaken for 06/10. This makes organizing experiments and following protocols harder and demands constant vigilance.

On top of that, there’s spatial representation: the labs where we work are often in buildings where all the floors and hallways look the same. Finding the right room isn’t intuitive. I’ve had to develop strategies to navigate them, but that takes time and valuable energy.

I also have trouble recognizing faces (prosopagnosia). This makes professional life even more complicated, especially at conferences or meetings in unfamiliar places, where I meet many people in offices, hallways, and cafeterias. These small daily tasks, which seem trivial to others, actually require me to invest significant mental resources and contribute to the overall fatigue we feel—an invisible side of dyslexia.

Moreover, we make mistakes at an inconstant rate. With various strategies, we can often hide difficulties. But when fatigue, stress, or switching between languages come into play, the compensation no longer works and the mistakes resurface. “Why don’t you recognize me when we saw each other two weeks ago?” “Why can’t you remember where the animal room is when we were just there two hours ago?” “Why did you send me the old version of a document when we just finalized the new one?” These are situations that fuel judgment about my professional abilities, reinforce the “scatterbrained” reputation, and are especially hard to bear when I’m already exhausted. This pressure from others’ perceptions is often the hardest part of living with dyslexia—it shadows every aspect of my work and life.

Neither ChatGPT nor correctors are fixing it.

Throughout my career as a researcher, dyslexia has always felt like a burden, not just because of the difficulties it causes, but especially because of other people’s perceptions. There’s always this suspicion, this stigma: “Oh, but come on, you just need to make an effort to make fewer mistakes!” As if it were just a lazy excuse. As if dyslexia could be “fixed” through willpower and focus.

The reality is quite different. Even with all the effort in the world, it’s often slower to read, compare, and remember. And it’s even truer today in the age of spellcheckers and artificial intelligence. Many people think: “With a spellchecker, you’re fine now, right?” But that’s simply not the case. These tools help a lot, of course, but they also generate a huge reading load: you have to compare the original text with the corrected one, check the meaning, and choose the right version. For someone with dyslexia, that means:

Reading text A, then corrected text B, just 5 seconds later.
Identifying what changed and what stayed the same.
Checking overall coherence.
Then focusing on the new information and deciding whether it’s relevant and generate a new text to start again.

All this requires triple the concentration, even though dyslexia already complicates reading and memory. This process is therefore much longer, more tiring, and requires considerable energy.

The Weight of Others’ Perceptions: Stigma and Misunderstanding

Telling others that you’re dyslexic means facing a double-edged reaction. On one hand, people often see us as unserious or even a bit “stupid” because we make spelling mistakes, get lost in space, or struggle with deadlines. We’re often seen as unprofessional, even though we put in enormous effort to compensate for these difficulties.

On the other hand, when we dare to ask for accommodations (like extra time or access to a disability-friendly position), people often accuse us of being “privileged” or “cheating.” I’ve sometimes been told that I’m lucky to be dyslexic because it gives me extra support. These remarks make me deeply uncomfortable: I never really know how to react, and sometimes I’ve even internalized them, thinking that maybe I was lucky and giving up on requesting accommodations. Yet, these aids exist to offset real, invisible difficulties. Even with them, I often remain exhausted and out of step with my colleagues.

Receiving these kinds of remarks is incredibly hurtful, and I hope that by sharing my story, I can help make them disappear

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