Intouch From the editor: Our May feature about dyslexia and how it may be more common among gas engineers certainly struck a note with readers. We had deliberately mis-spelled dyslexia on our cover, to illustrate the real-life experience
Please send your letters, which may be edited, to editorial@registeredgasengineer.co.uk.
of some people who live with the condition – and we acknowledge that this treatment did not go down well with some readers. Some people found it in poor taste, which certainly was not our intention.
But we know that the article has really got people talking openly about dyslexia and encouraged them to share their own experiences with others. Just some of the responses we received are below.
I couldn’t do what I do without dyslexia I have just read the article, Working when you have dyslexia. I fully endorse what was written. I, too, find that the difference that dyslexia makes for me in how I think is a real advantage to me and enables me to trace faults almost instantaneously. This ‘gift’ enables me to see in my mind the whole assembly in its entirety and how each part interacts with other components. I can see how these symptoms would be related to each part in the working assembly. As a result, I can often see maybe four possible failures that would cause these symptoms and a quick test can eliminate maybe two or three possibilities. This whole thought process is almost instantaneous and it’s intuitive, so even I can’t
often explain how I have made the determination. Because of how my mind works, I do have an appetite to understand any mechanism completely but there are many devices or components where it is not possible to dismantle so that I can discover how it works, and I find that a bit frustrating. Very often manufacturers do not provide sufficient details and the fault-tracing flow charts in the manual are often incomplete, poorly thought through or non-existent. Instruction books are often full of many words but lack logic and the information needed is fragmented. I think dyslexia is a gift and I could not do what I do anything like as well without it. I do sometimes tell my
customers that I am dyslexic and I get a variety of responses: some seem disturbed and concerned that somehow this makes me ‘disabled’ and look worried that they have let a disabled person loose on their precious equipment. This is usually short-lived, though, when I then explain how it enables me to be much more capable. It often also uncovers their own hidden dyslexia or that of a family member, and sharing the differences of each other’s dyslexia can be quite refreshing and liberating. My school experience was similar to Paul’s and is a sad and painful memory for me, but my Precision Engineering apprenticeship was quite different – my school exam
I’ve dealt with it in secret Having a form of dyslexia has created a number of challenges for me in my life from my school days in the 60s and 70s. This article was brilliant and heartwarming to read. I have had to deal with this in secret most of my adult life, but when mandatory assessments
were introduced, it created obstacles for me with regard to reading sentences or phrases and determining what was asked or said – but if someone read it to me aloud I could fully understand. I made my local assessment centre aware ‘privately’ of my situation a number of years ago,
and they have been very professional in assisting me with the additional challenges. I’m now in my 60s with my career coming to an end and the article was uplifting for me. I am very pleased that this is being brought to people’s attention. Walter Montgomery
results were 2 per cent in physics at school compared with my apprenticeship exam of 98 per cent in engineering science. Cleary the problem with physics at school was not the subject matter but the exam. Running my own business for the past 19 years has been great but also has its own challenges relating to the dyslexia. Many of the organisational aspects are made more difficult because my mind is not organised in a sequential manner and so using a non-sequential mind to organise my work sequentially is almost impossible. But my wife does have a sequential mind and so I rely upon her heavily with her book-keeping and organisational skills to complement mine. Christopher Dolley
Disappointed with wall of text I was really excited to see an article about dyslexia, a really important and interesting topic! Very disappointed to turn to a wall of text, which obviously hadn’t been written or presented with dyslexic people in mind. Amy Hemmings
Coverline was in bad taste and insulting I am concerned about the intent of the publisher, and the point they are trying to make. Dyslexia is a common condition and has, in the past, created a social stigma from childhood all the
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way through a person’s life. In the UK, gas engineering is a heavily regulated trade, with the tradespeople having to undertake apprenticeships and regular training, the difficulty of
which is only increased by dyslexia. Was [your cover line] a deliberate play on the spelling to reflect the subject matter or simply poor proof-reading on
your part? If it was the former, then it was in very bad taste and, as someone who suffers from this condition, I find it insulting and degrading. Details withheld
