I have dyslexia. Mild form, diagnosed late. I wrote about it before when I discovered audiobooks, how reading was always a fight, how I memorize words by their sound because my brain rearranges the letters.
But nobody really talks about the writing side.
When I type, I know what I want to say. The sentence exists in my head, fully formed. Then my fingers start moving and somewhere between brain and keyboard, "the" becomes "teh", "from" becomes "form", "because" becomes "becuase", and the word "beautiful" – forget it. b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l. I have to spell it out loud in my head every single time. That example is from my previous post too, and it still hasn't changed.
Spellcheck and autocorrect have been covering for me for years. Most people I work with have no idea. Everything I send looks fine because I spend twice the energy getting there.
So I built a thing
I made a Claude Code skill called /dyslexia. You give it any text, and it can do two things: simulate dyslexic writing at severity 1 through 10, or fix dyslexic text while keeping the writer's voice.
The simulate part is the point. I wanted people who don't have dyslexia to read something and go "oh, so this is what that's like." Not as a lecture. Just five seconds of friction.
What it looks like
Same sentence, four severity levels:
Your text: "I've been programming for fifteen years and I still love it. There's something magical about turning ideas into working software."
Level 3 (mild):
Ive been programing for fifteen years and I sitll love it. Theres somthing magical about turning ideas into workign software.
Level 6 (moderate):
Ive bean programing for fiveteen years and I sitll love it. Theres somthing magicla abut turning ideas into workign sofware.
Level 8 (severe):
Ive bean programing for fiveteen... fiften years and I sitll love it. Theres somthing magicla about turning ideas into workign sofware. software*. Teh best part – you know waht I mena.
Level 10 (extreme):
Ive bean programing for fiv– for a long tiem and I sitll love it. Theres somthing... its hard to expl... its magic. turning ideas into workign sofware. I mena software. sorry for teh mess, I swear im smarter than this looks
Here is the part that will surprise you
I can read all of the above without any trouble. Levels 5 through 8, I read those at normal speed. My brain doesn't flag them as wrong. I have spent my whole life reading my own mangled text, so at some point my visual processing just started autocorrecting silently. "Teh" is "the" to me. "Becuase" is obviously "because." I don't even pause.
You probably had to slow down though. Maybe re-read a word. Maybe "fiveteen" tripped you up for half a second. That half-second of friction, that "wait, what?" moment – that is what I experience in the other direction, every time I write. My brain autocorrects when reading but mangles when writing. Same wiring, opposite ends.
I've tried to explain this to people before and it never quite lands. Showing it works better. The letters are not random. "The" always wants to be "teh." "From" always wants to be "form." My patterns have been the same for thirty years.
Install it
If you use Claude Code, two commands:
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/dyslexia
curl -o ~/.claude/skills/dyslexia/SKILL.md \
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nembal/dyslexia-skill/main/SKILL.md
Restart Claude Code, type /dyslexia with any text. It asks which mode and severity, shows a preview, then transforms your text.
The repo is one file, MIT licensed, no dependencies. Just a SKILL.md that tells Claude how to realistically simulate (or fix) dyslexic writing patterns.
Why I made this
About 15% of the population has some form of dyslexia. Most are undiagnosed. I was not diagnosed until my thirties, and when it happened, suddenly the grammar struggles, the difficulty with new languages, the fatigue from reading – all of it had a name. It was not me "not trying hard enough."
I don't expect a tool to change anyone's mind about dyslexia. But if you run it once and feel even a bit of that friction while reading, you'll get closer to understanding it than any explanation I could write. And believe me, I've tried writing them.
Links:
dyslexia-skill on GitHub
International Dyslexia Association
r/dyslexia