Understanding reading issues for disabled researchers

It is not just for dyslexic researchers that extensive reading can pose difficulties. Researchers with other impairments, learning difficulties and/or long term health conditions also faced some challenges. Blind researchers using assistive technology to access research literature are enabled to read. But assistive technology can be costly in terms of time.

‘It also took a while for my supervisor to realise just how slowly I could read. This is accentuated by the subject-specific notation which includes a significant number of sub- and super-scripts, symbols etc. There are both difficult to read, even using access technology, and completely impossible for an OCR (scan and read back) system, my preferred method of reading, to handle. Diagrams were also difficult to access, as these were often three-dimensional plots which took a good deal of time to study for the important detailed information that they include.’

Postgraduate researcher who is blind

A researcher with ME talked about the physical impact of reading.

‘The words just seem to bounce back off my eyes and, just a few pages into an article or a book, I will be fighting to get the words to make sense or even to go into my head at all. I have found myself spending hours over just a page or two and still finding that I really don't know what I have read or its significance. I will end up just paraphrasing most of it into note form and hoping that, when I go back over the notes to write up the essay, I will be able to get something from the information then.’

Masters by research student

The same researcher described grappling with a reading list as tall as them and feeling daunted by the volume.

Researchers who experience high levels of pain when they have to sit in one position for more than a few minutes may find that reading intensively is a challenging task.

Reading will have an impact too on deaf researchers whose first language is BSL (British Sign Language). Pre-lingual Deaf researchers (born deaf) cannot learn English in the way that, for example, international researchers are able to. They cannot be surrounded by the language and absorb it by osmosis because they cannot hear it. Additionally BSL is wholly visual; Deaf researchers therefore do not have a written or spoken language as a foundation for learning a second language.

Research shows that the reading age of Deaf school leavers is below the national average. We may expect that Deaf people reaching research education are functioning at a relatively advanced level. However, reading remains a very difficult and time-consuming task for some Deaf researchers; their vocabulary is usually very restricted when compared with their hearing peers. A deaf researcher will not have heard many of the words that are common currency at university. Unfamiliar words, or words which have not been specifically introduced to the researcher, cannot be lip-read. Consequently, deaf researchers often have to research not only the terminology of their subject, but also carrier language that is commonplace for hearing peers.

These effects are wholly independent of the deaf researcher's intellectual ability or academic potential.