Mother’s homemade tool to help beat daughter’s dyslexia turns business idea

A MOTHER has turned a homemade device she designed to help her daughter cope with dyslexia into a business project that could offer the same assistance to thousands of children.

Sheila Byrne from Malahide, Co Dublin, began cutting up cereal boxes when her daughter Jenny showed signs of difficulty reading when she started school 15 years ago. But when she lost her job two years ago, she used her redundancy money and a start-up grant from Fingal Enterprise Board, and has now launched the Readassist. What looks like nothing more than a six-inch ruler gives people with dyslexia the chance to focus just on the line of text they are trying to read, which can be a difficulty for those with the condition that affects an estimated 80,000 Irish people.

“I used to cut up bits of cardboard in the same way so that Jenny could read down carefully through each line, as she was having problems jumping between lines and just seeing a blur on the page,” said Sheila.

“I used to put soft coloured plastic that I bought from a model aircraft shop under the hole in the cardboard as people with dyslexia also often have trouble with the glare from black and white texts on pages,” she said.

After doing a short course on starting her own business, she has now joined forces with Dublin company Spear Technology to produce the Readassist, which is available in bookshops and from www.readassist.ie

The curved sliding frame of the rule can be adjusted to the height of the text being read, while a range of plastic lenses in the colours most commonly used by people with dyslexia are also provided to eliminate glare from the page and help increase concentration. Sheila said the device has been given the backing of an optometrist and, priced at €24.95, is a much cheaper option than specialist reading glasses or pens for people with dyslexia, which can cost several hundred euro.

Launching the Read-assist last night, Senator David Norris said he is often blistered by cranks as a person in public life but something simple and brilliant comes along very occasionally.

“Sheila’s idea has the simplicity and beauty of the invention of the safety pin or the paper clip and I hope it spreads as wide and as usefully,” he said.

Dyslexia Association of Ireland director Rosie Bissett said the innovation is a valuable addition to the range of tools available and Sheila has succeeded in turning her DIY reading ruler into an impressive Irish-designed product which many people will find useful.