Take a boy who slides a reading pen along his science book. A voice reads each line into his headphones, and he follows the whole chapter. Then he tries to read the title aloud, and he gets stuck. If that sounds like your kitchen table, hear this first. Your child isn’t broken, their brain is learning differently.
FROM THE VIDEO
Key moments from Unlocking Potential: The Power of Assistive Technology, with Julia Clout of Succeed with Dyslexia:
Common questions from parents
Will text-to-speech stop my child from learning to read?
Do colored overlays help with dyslexia?
Which tool should we try first?
Is a screener enough to get my child tools at school?
A reading pen reads the page aloud. So does text-to-speech. Neither one teaches your child to read. How to use both kinds of help without trading one for the other.
Does a reading tool teach my child to read?
No, and it was never built to. A reading pen reads the page aloud. Text-to-speech does the same thing on a screen. A dictation app turns your child’s spoken words into typed ones. These tools give your child access. Your child hears the science chapter and keeps learning science. Your child says a story out loud and gets it onto the page.
Teaching is a different job. Reading is built by teaching. Sounds and letters, step by step, with lots of practice. A voice reading the page does not do that work. Listening is good for your child. It is not reading practice. Our guide to dyslexia lays out how reading grows.
So use both. The tool keeps your child in the lesson. Reading instruction builds the reader. We wrote more about the three jobs assistive tech does.
Some apps go further and say they teach. We are not against technology. But here is our view, from the learning-tech research we hold. The good results sit beside a teaching adult, not in place of one. A strong app asks your child to pull answers from memory. It brings old material back after a gap. It says what to fix next, not only right or wrong. Points and badges on their own are not teaching. Here is what studies found about learning software.
The tool keeps your child in the lesson, and reading instruction builds the reader.
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
Should we try colored overlays?
The speaker in this video suggests colored overlays. She means them for readers who say the words “jiggle.” If your child tells you that, take it seriously. Something is making the page hard to look at. It is worth a check.
Here is what we know. In 2009, four eye and child health groups put out a joint statement. They said vision problems do not cause dyslexia. Dyslexia is trouble reading and spelling words. The trouble is not in seeing the letters. A 2016 review by Griffiths and colleagues looked at colored overlays. It found the evidence does not support them for reading.
A separate eye problem is still worth ruling out. Trouble focusing up close makes reading uncomfortable for some children. A quick school eye check is not likely to find it. So book an eye exam that checks near vision. We are not against eye care. Our point is narrow: an overlay is not a reading lesson. Our page on dyslexia versus a vision problem says when to check the eyes.
Key takeaways
- Access is not teaching: A reading pen keeps your child in the lesson. It does not teach reading.
- Do both: Use the tool for access, and keep reading instruction going beside it.
- Ask one question: Is this tool building the skill, or replacing it?
Is this tool building the skill, or replacing it?
The tools are good. The risk is in how they get used. The question was never “tool: yes or no.” Ask this instead. Is this support building the skill, or replacing the expectation that it gets built? That is a question to ask, not a verdict. A tool that keeps your child in the lesson is doing its job.
Here is where things go wrong, in our view. Access gets handed out. Then the reading teaching quietly stops. The child finishes school able to hear a book, but not read it. Our infographic on building skills, not replacing them walks through the same question.
Four steps for this week:
- Match the tool to the barrier. In the video, Julia Clout says to pick each tool for your goal. One tool for a long chapter. Another for getting ideas down.
- Keep some reading tool-free. Read a short page together, with your child doing the reading. Let the tool handle the long chapter.
- Ask where the reading is taught. Does your child have an IEP or 504 plan? Ask two things about each tool. What does it give access to? And where is reading being taught? If extra reading help is not working, here is what to ask for.
- Try listening back. Clout uses text-to-speech to proofread her own writing. She listens for flow, punctuation and a wrong word in the wrong place. Have your child listen back to one finished paragraph.
Is this support building the skill, or replacing the expectation that it gets built?
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
You want your child learning today and growing into a reader, both at once. A tool handed out in place of reading teaching trades one for the other. You are the one who keeps both in view. The free screener asks what you see; it is not a diagnosis. Only a professional evaluation gets an IEP or 504 plan. To find your child’s starting point, take the free dyslexia screener.
See what All Access gives your child
Take the dyslexia test
Is your child struggling in school?
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You describe what you see at home. We turn it into a plan you start this week.
- Answer 5 short questionnaires about what you already notice, 30–45 minutes at your own kitchen table
- Your child sits no test and gets no score: nothing to schedule, nothing for them to dread
- You do the answering, the AI does the writing, and a person reviews it before it reaches you
- Access all 40+ courses instantly: reading, math, focus, processing and more, with new ones added regularly
Why we use AI, plainly: it writes from a knowledge base our team maintains and audits. We work through it line by line and pull anything the evidence stops supporting. The roadmap you get on Tuesday reflects what we corrected on Monday, and a human still reads it before you do.
Your school district must evaluate your child free of charge if you ask in writing, whatever your income and whatever the outcome (US, 34 CFR 300.111 and 300.301(b)). That route takes time and answers a different question than you do. This one starts today, from what you already know.
Your answers stay yours. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not hand identifiable assessment data to outside AI companies to train their models.
A screener is a starting point, not a diagnosis. If your child might need formal accommodations (an IEP or 504 plan), or you suspect a vision, hearing or medical cause, pursue a professional evaluation too. That is the only route to those supports.
