How to Diagnose Dyslexia
When someone has average higher-level oral language skills but struggles with reading, spelling and/or writing, it’s worth getting them formally tested for dyslexia. Professionals look for a constellation of warning signs such as an unexpected deficit in phonological processing, reading decoding and fluency, and spelling and writing.


Early diagnosis can mean lifelong support in education and various approaches to ease daily tasks.

Diagnosis
Adults who think they might have dyslexia can take an online screening test. However, for a formal diagnosis, they must see a specialist who will evaluate their reading skills. The evaluation process looks at several factors, including reading accuracy and fluency, spelling, and comprehension. It may include tests that look at other factors, such as working memory and attention. An evaluation of dyslexia can help adults learn how to cope with their symptoms and improve their quality of life.

Dyslexia is often inherited, and it can affect people from any ethnic background. People with dyslexia can also have trouble learning if they have other health problems or vision issues. Symptoms usually start when the person is school-aged, and they can have an impact on their social and educational development. Having dyslexia doesn’t mean someone is lazy or less intelligent, but it can lead to difficulties keeping up with their peers and emotional impacts that continue into adulthood.

Symptoms
A person with dyslexia struggles to recognize phonemes (the sounds that make up words like "b" and "d"), blend them into words and remember those word patterns in order to read. They often miss or skip words, lose their place when reading and have trouble spelling. They may also struggle with interpreting what they read or understanding the meaning of written words.

Dyslexia is most evident in school-age children and adults who struggle to keep up with their peers academically, despite trying hard. They often have low self-esteem and feel they're stupid or lazy, despite the fact that neither of these are true.

Dyslexia can be difficult to identify if the symptoms are subtle. However, early evaluations can help identify dyslexia by identifying a cluster of weaknesses alongside areas of strength, such as a discrepancy between receptive vocabulary and reading decoding and fluency. The sooner a dyslexic person gets an evaluation, the sooner they can start receiving specialized teaching and support.

Treatment
It is important to get a diagnosis for dyslexia because it can help you get the support you need. A trained dyslexia specialist can perform a diagnostic assessment and will give you a clearer picture of your child’s strengths and weaknesses in reading.

The first step in the process is a full evaluation that gathers information about your child’s development, educational opportunities and current reading performance. Then the professional identifies areas of weakness, such as phonemic awareness (hearing and recognizing individual sounds in words); reading decoding and fluency; spelling; and writing. These are the core symptoms of dyslexia.

If the evaluation reveals that your child’s reading skills are significantly below the average for their age, then a diagnosis of dyslexia should be considered. There are a wide range of specialist educational interventions and programmes that can help improve your child’s reading, writing, spelling and communication. These are most effective if started at a young age.

Counseling
If you notice your child has several of the classic warning signs, such as trouble learning letters and letter sounds; difficulty reading aloud in class; misplacing or mixing up the position of sounds within words (like "cat" and "hat"), you should take them to a specialist. Adults can also be evaluated, though it is often harder for them because they have developed coping strategies over the years. Professional testers look for a constellation of symptoms across multiple areas, including phonological processing (e.g. phonological awareness, phonological memory, and rapid automatic naming); reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension; and spelling and writing skills.

They will also want to test for concomitant oral language problems, as genetics of dyslexia these often cause dyslexia. They will probably also carry out a formal Diagnostic Assessment using checklists and/or screeners, along with the information from their informal observation, conversation, and the standardized tests. This will allow them to identify evidence of dyslexia, such as problems with phonological processing, reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension; spelling and writing difficulties; and working memory problems.