The New York Times picks up on a story that we had last week.

From MSNBC:

A new study of entrepreneurs by London’s Cass Business School reports that 35 percent of U.S. entrepreneurs have dyslexia. UK entrepreneurs, the research found, “are five times more likely to suffer from dyslexia than the average UK citizen.”

Julie Logan, who conducted the study, also found some key traits that dyslexics are more likely to possess than their non-dyslexic counterparts:

• Own more than one business
• Run their businesses for a shorter time (although grow them more quickly)
• Start their businesses right after school
• Excel in oral communications, problem solving, delegation, and spatial awareness
• Be influenced by a mentor (versus non-dyslexics, who are more influenced by educational experiences)
• Manage more staff (25 as mean, versus 17 for non-dyslexics) because of increased ability to delegate, an example of a coping strategy employed to overcome difficulties

From the Windsor (Ontario) Star, a feature about Cisco systems CEO John Chambers and his life with dyslexia.

“I can’t explain why, but I just approach problems differently,” he told Fortune magazine five years ago. “I picture a chess game on a multiple-layer dimensional cycle and almost play it out in my mind.”

It is how Chambers moved Cisco from being a unidimensional maker of routers (the Internet’s basic plumbing) to becoming a multi-faceted developer of electronic gear, software and services.

Chambers cannot read sentences, which is why the slides he uses in his presentations include only a couple of words which alert him to the general topic he wants to talk about. “I’m very good at seeing something and memorizing the whole concept,” he says.

Chambers was very adept at hiding his dyslexia.

(more…)

From the San Jose Mercury News:

Benetech, a technology non-profit based in Palo Alto, announced this week that it has received a $32 million federal grant to expand Bookshare.org, a website that provides scanned books and periodicals to people who are blind or dyslexic.

The grant will allow it to open up its collection of more than 34,000 volumes free of charge to all blind or dyslexic students from kindergarten through graduate school.

“We believe this project could potentially benefit thousands of students . . . by exposing them to an Internet library with a multitude of books, magazines and newspapers in accessible formats,” Patty Guard, acting director of the Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs, wrote in an e-mail Thursday.The 5-year-old Bookshare already has 6,000 to 7,000 users, but that should increase to about 100,000 as a result of the grant, said Bookshare CEO Jim Fruchterman, who last year won a MacArthur Fellowship for his work.

He describes the site, which he thought of after watching his son download music from Napster, as “Amazon.com meets Napster meets Talking Books for the Blind - but legal.”

The practice of giving students with learning disabilities more time to take their tests has become so common at top private schools in New York City and across the country that it carries nearly no stigma, the New York Sun reports.

Disability rights activists describe the trend as an important victory for students with difficulties such as dyslexia and attention deficit disorder, but a small number of students are waging a battle against the accommodations, a struggle that could intensify when the SAT season begins again this fall. Their target audience: college admissions officers, who they say risk being hoodwinked into admitting students with artificially impeccable transcripts.