A little while ago I got sucked into the Draw Something craze and was playing against my friend  Danielle (A Stash Addict) one evening. I had drawn a picture of Elvis. Danielle had to guess the picture and then spell out the word using the five tiles provided to earn us both some points.  If you don’t know this game, you can watch a recording of the screen as the other person is guessing your drawing – it’s fun to do this as you can see how much of the drawing they saw before they made a correct guess.

While I was watching the recording, I could see that from the very start of the picture (the black quiff) she knew exactly what it was, yet it took her many attempts to rearrange the 5 tiles to spell out ‘Elvis’ – by which time  the picture was detailed down to the final rhinestone. I have always known Danielle to be dyslexic, and her first couple of attempts were a little bit amusing,  but as her repeated attempts to get the letters in the right order continued, I really had a sense of massive frustration for her and glimpsed for the first time how difficult it must be to do some of the things I take for granted. Danielle also has dyscalculia, which is the numeric equivalent of dyslexia.