The learnability of programming with regards to Dyslexia

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Weir, Catriona; McNeill, Fiona and Alexandru, Cristina and Sentance, Sue and Cutts, Quintin, eds. (2025) The learnability of programming with regards to Dyslexia. In: UKICER '25: Proceedings of the 2025 Conference on UK and Ireland Computing Education Research. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), GBR, p. 1. ISBN 979-8-4007-2078-9 (https://doi.org/10.1145/3754508.3754520)

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Abstract

Dyslexia is a neurological learning disability that affects people’s reading, writing and spelling abilities. In the past two decades, research studies have found that ten per cent of the UK population is thought to be dyslexic. It has been argued that those with dyslexia tend to have good creative and problem solving skills [3]. Thusly, it’s unsurprising computing science appeals to those with dyslexia [2]. However, such students find other aspects of computing challenging, such as syntax, and word overcrowding [1]. Whilst there has been some investigation into these challenges, as more students with dyslexia study computing, it is important to understand their challenges and provide support to help them overcome the disadvantages.

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