This document describes an app called Dyseggxia that was created to help children with dyslexia in Spanish. It provides an engaging and interactive tool using a new scientifically validated methodology. Exercises target specific difficulties of dyslexia and have been tested on children ages 6 to 11 who showed significant improvements in writing after using the app. The app has been downloaded over 17,000 times in over 70 countries and received an award for best education app.

1. A Scientifically Validated App to Help
Children to Overcome Dyslexia
in Spanish
by the Cookie Cloud Team

2. Dyslexia
• Dyslexia is a learning disability characterized by
difficulties with accurate word recognition and by
poor spelling and decoding abilities
(Vellutino et al., 2004)
!
• As side effect, this impedes the growth of
vocabulary and background knowledge
• Children with dyslexia tend to show signs of
depression and low self-esteem
(International
Association of
Dyslexia, 2011)

3. Dyslexia
(Paulesu et al. 2001)
(Jiménez et al. 2009)
(Eurostat, 2012)
(Interagency
Commission on
Learning
Disabilities,
1987)
• Neurological origin
!
• 7.5-11% Spanish speaking
• 50 million in the European
Union
• 10-17.5% of the US population
• Universal
• Frequent
(Shaywitz,
2008)

4. Dyslexia and Education
• Today, the most frequent way to detect
a child with dyslexia is due to her or his
academic failure
• In Europe 15.2% of the students do not
finish the obligatory secondary school
• In Spain 31% of the students drop
secondary school
• In Spain 4 out of 6 cases of academic
failure are related to dyslexia
(International
Dyslexia
Association, 2011)
!
(European
Commission, 2011)
!
(Eurostat, 2011)
!
(Federación
Española de la
Dislexia, 2008)

5. Traditional Methods
for Overcoming Dyslexia
• To mitigate dyslexia, children need to do
language exercises
• Paper based
• Monotonous exercises
• Dyslexia workbooks are boring for children

6. The Idea
• Provide children an interactive and
engaging tool
• Overcome difficulties while playing
exercises created with a new
linguistic based methodology

7. since March 2011

8. Luz Rello
Linguist, PhD
student
on dyslexia
Clara Bayarri
Software Engineer
The Team
Content
Design
&
Evaluation
Development
Graphic
Design
Azuki Gorriz
Graphic Designer
and Illustrator

9. Features
• Exercises in Spanish and English
• More than 5,000 different exercises
• Six types of exercises
• Five difficulty levels: initial, easy, medium, hard
and expert
• Graphics showing the learning evolution
• Engaging elements: points, sounds and
accessories to customize your penguin (app’s pet)

10. New Methodology

11. Scientific Content Design
(Rello,Baeza-
Yates, Saggion
& Pedler, LREC
2012)
(Rello, &
Llisterri, LDW
2012)
(Rello, Bayarri &
Gorriz, ASSETS
2012)
• Creation of a
corpus of texts
written by children
with dyslexia
• Linguistic
analysis of
the errors
• Integration of
the linguistic
patterns in the
exercises

12. Exercise Design
Empirical
Error
Analysis
+
Difficulties
• Phonology
• Orthography
• Morphology
• Lexicon
• Omission
!
!
• Substitution

13. • Insertion
• Transposition
• Derivation • Word Separation

14. Difficulty Levels
• Defined by:
• Specific difficulties of
Dyslexia
• Word length
• Frequency
• Number of neighbors
• User testing (15 participants)
(Rello, Bayarri &
Gorriz, ASSETS 2013)

15. Text Appearance
• Based on
previous
research on
people with
dyslexia using
eye-tracking
• Best fonts
for dyslexia
(Rello & Baeza-Yates,
ASSETS 2013)
(Rello, Kanvinde &
Baeza-Yates, W4A 2012)
!
!
• Good colors
for dyslexia

16. Engaging Children
• The penguin grows and earns prizes
(Rello,
Bayarri, &
Gorriz,
TISE 2013)

17. For Parents & Teachers
• Graphics showing the evolution of the child
(Rello,
Bayarri, &
Gorriz,
TISE 2013)

18. Scientific Evaluation
• Longitudinal study in Lestonnac School,
with psychologists from Creix Centre
• 8 weeks (April-June 2013)
!
• 48 participants
with dyslexia
• From 6 to 11 years old
[Rello et al.,
ASSETS
2014]

19. Methodology
Design within-subjects
Independent measures
Piruletras
Word Search
Dependent
measures
Writing — Rate of Words with Errors
Writing — Rate of Errors per Word
Writing — Rate of Errors per Wrong Word
Reading — Rate of Errors per Word
Subjective Reading and Writing Skills
Materials
TALE tests
!
Reading and
Writing Tests
- Test Structure
- Word Content (children’s
school textbooks, app
words)
- Age Groups
Procedure It is a contest!
[Rello et al.,
ASSETS
2014]

20. Methodology
• Participants
- 54 potential participants
- ‘Test of Reading and Writing Analysis‘
(TALE) to diagnose dyslexia
- 48 participants (29 girls and 19 boys)
- All experienced in playing computer games
- 44 of them regularly played games on
mobile devices
Two Groups
Younger children:
13 girls and 11 boys
6 to 9 years old
first, second and third year
(μ =̄ 7.67, s = 1.00)
using
TALE Older children:
16 girls and 8 boys
9 to 11 years old
fourth and fifth year
(μ= 9.92, s = 0.78)
[Rello et al.,
ASSETS
2014]

21. Results
Younger Group
Older Group
[Rello et al.,
ASSETS
2014]

22. Conclusions
• It significantly improves the
writing of children with dyslexia
(9 and 11 years old after 4 weeks)
• 42% less writing
errors
[Rello et al.,
ASSETS
2014]
• 34% less errors rate
per wrong word
hace = 0 error
ace = 1 error
aze = 2 errors

23. Social Impact
• 17,000 downloads
(Since June 2012)
• More than 70 countries
• Since September 2013:
— 2,282 downloads
— 310 sold (0.79€)

24. Social Impact
• In the curriculum of specialized centers in Barcelona and Balearic
Islands: Creix, UDITTA, Coddia, among others
• Recommended by associations of dyslexia (Madrid, Barcelona,
Balearic Islands, Galicia, SUMDIS, ForDyslexia, among others)
• On TV, radio and newspapers, blogs & talks

25. Championship!
• First Dyseggxia contest for children
at Mobile World Centre, Barcelona
• Overcome dyslexia & make friends
• Organizers
• Sponsors

26. First Prize in Education Category
• over 200 apps (4 categories)

27. Ongoing Work
• Android and Web version
• Inclusion in schools
• Inclusion reeducation programs
• Extend to more languages
• Include a business manager in our
team
• Include a customer service
representative in our team
• Find funding to become a start-up
• Android beta version
• Ajuntament de Barcelona
(licenses and instruction classes
in schools)
• — German with
Hochschule Emden/Leer
— Catalan with
Calatan Dyslexia
Association

28. Other Possibilities of Dyseggxia
• We discovered that some people is using it to...
!
!
!
• Learning new languages
• Practice spelling
• Mind training for children, adults and elderly
• Learning spelling for low-literate adults
!
• We can create books for children and school
materials

29. Summary
• Fosters equal opportunities
• Improves the outcome
• Empowers teachers and
parents
• Scientifically validated
• Learning while playing, engaging
• More affordable (and complementary) compared to
reeducation classes with a private teacher (0.79€ vs 30€/h)

30. Research Papers
• Rello, Luz; Bayarri, Clara; Otal, Yolanda & Pielot, Martin. A Method to Improve the Spelling of
Children with Dyslexia. ASSETS 2014: The 16th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference of
Computers and Accessibility, Rochester, NY USA, 20-22 October..
• Rello, Luz; Bayarri, Clara & Gorriz, Azuki. 2012. What is Wrong with this Word? Dyseggxia: a
Game for Children with Dyslexia. In Proceedings of the 14th International ACM SIGACCESS
Conference of Computers and Accessibility (ASSETSb 2012). Boulder, USA, 22-24 October.
• Rello, Luz; Clara Bayarri & Azuki Gorriz. 2013. Un juego educativo para niños con dislexia. XIV
Congreso Internacional de Interacción Persona-Ordenador (INTERACCIÓN 2013). September
17-20, 2013, Madrid, Spain.
• Rello, Luz & Llisterri, Joaquim. 2012. There are Phonetic Patterns in Vowel Substitution
Errors in Texts Written by Persons with Dyslexia. In Proceedings of the 21st Annual World
Congress on Learning Disabilities (LDW 2012). Oviedo, Spain, 5-7 September.
• Rello, Luz 2013. Design of Word Exercises for Children with Dyslexia. The 5th International
Conference on Software Development for Enhancing Accessibility and Fighting Info-exclusion
(DSAI 2013). Vigo, Spain, 13-15 November.

31. Research Papers
• Rello, Luz; Clara Bayarri & Azuki Gorriz. 2013. Dyseggxia o Piruletras: Ejercicios Lingüísticos
para la Reeducación de la Dislexia en un Juego para Tableta (Dyseggxia or Piruletras:
Language Exercises for Rehabilitation of Dyslexia in a Game for Tablet) In Proceedings of the
TISE 2013: XVIII Congreso Internacional de Informática Educativa. Porto Alegre, Brasil, 9-11
December, 2013.
• Rello, Luz; Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Horacio Saggion & Jennifer Pedler. 2012. A First Approach to
the Creation of a Spanish Corpus of Dyslexic Texts. In Proceedings of the LREC Workshop
Natural Language Processing for Improving Textual Accessibility (NLP4ITA). Istanbul, Turkey, 27
May, 2012.
• Rello, Luz; Kanvinde, Gaurang & Baeza-Yates, Ricardo. 2012. Layout Guidelines for Web Text
and a Web Service to Improve Accessibility for Dyslexics. In Proceedings of the International
Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A 2012). Lyon, France, 16-17 April.
• Rello, Luz & Baeza-Yates, Ricardo. 2013. Good Fonts for Dyslexia. ASSETS 2013: The 15th
International ACM SIGACCESS Conference of Computers and Accessibility (ASSETSa 2013),
Bellevue, Washington USA, 22-24 October.

32. Thank You!
Contact:
luzrello@acm.org
www.dyseggxia.com