6 Gifts for Dyslexics That Your Friends & Family Will Love

Shopping for gifts for friends and family members can be difficult. Be it a birthday or leading up to the holiday season, understanding a friend or family member’s taste is not so simple. Knowing their style and general preferences for what they’d appreciate as a gift is often more complex than we realize when we set out on the gift-buying journey. Add in dyslexia to the mix and your gift selection options are narrowed down significantly. Buying gifts for dyslexics is challenging but rewarding when you find the perfect item.

During Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year’s time, there are plenty of gift options for adults or children with dyslexia. While toys for dyslexia help them challenge it, other technological devices will make their lives easier.

OrCam did the work for you and found some great gift ideas for your beloved friends & family members with dyslexia and/or reading difficulties. Read on to check out the following gifts that can make a dyslexic person’s daily living smoother.

1. OrCam Learn

The OrCam Learn is a first-of-its-kind lightweight, handheld device with a smart camera that seamlessly reads text from any printed surface or digital screen. What?! Yes, you read right. It looks like a pen and acts like a personal reader. It enables you to enjoy the morning paper, read any book, and even read all the text that appears on your computer or smartphone screen.

OrCam Learn is a personal AI-driven device for people who have mild low vision, and reading difficulties, including dyslexia and reading fatigue. In addition, it can benefit anyone who is consistently exposed to large amounts of text – at work and at school, or for leisure. With just the click of a button, the OrCam Learn uses a laser to capture full pages or screens in one shot and seamlessly read it back to you. Any type of text is instantly converted into audio for transmission, either through the device’s tiny speaker or a connected Bluetooth device.

Sounds cool? Order one now online or via Amazon.com.

2. Kindle

As a parent or teacher of a dyslexic reader, it can be hard to watch your child or student struggle with reading. One great solution when considering gifts for dyslexics is to get them an Amazon Kindle. Which can accommodate users with large print and specialized fonts. Changing the font size of the text and the number of words on the e-reader screen can help students customize the text to their preferences, which can be especially helpful for struggling readers.

Furthermore, you can switch the font to OpenDyslexia which is a special font created to help dyslexics read in an easier way. There is also a text-to-speech feature that can be used to better understand a word that is causing the reader difficulty by hearing it read aloud.

3. Audible Subscription

While not tangible, another great idea is to gift your beloved dyslexic friend or family member a subscription to Audible, the world’s largest producer and provider of spoken-word entertainment and audiobooks. For just $14.95 per month after the first 30-day free trial, users can access hundreds of books that can be read aloud for them. Especially for children who have been out of school for a long time this year, this can present a great opportunity to keep their minds engaged by streaming incredible content.

4. BlueTooth Speakers

To listen to these e-books untethered, a good co-gift to get your dyslexic friend or family member could be a set of BlueTooth speakers, like these JBL Portable BlueTooth speakers. JBL speakers range in price from $25 to $450, so there is something for every budget.

If you think your friend or family member might prefer the option of listening discreetly, or perhaps they’re a student and need to be able to read silently in quiet places like a library, another good option is BlueTooth in-ear headphones like these Apple AirPods.

5. Coloured Reading Rulers

For old-school reading of text in printed ink on paper, there is this discreet and portable reading ruler from The Dyslexia Shop in the UK. Made of a combination of opaque and transparent plastic, it both underlines the text and highlights it in a colored tint.

The Crossbow Reading Ruler is a small overlay designed specifically to benefit those with Visual Stress and dyslexia. Not only does the Eye Level Reading Ruler work to reduce the symptoms of Visual Stress, it also highlights and underlines text, making it easier for the dyslexic reader to keep their place on the page they are reading. Users can choose from “single line” or “paragraph” depth tracking, and the highlighted portion is at the top of the card so that the opaque portion is beneath it and the person reading does not lose context.

6. Educational Toys for Children

Every child loves toys and they always want more. During the holiday season, it’s time to spoil them a little bit. Children with dyslexia can play educational games and toys to overcome this challenge. Educational toys are a great gift idea for children with dyslexia or reading difficulties.

We hope this list gave you some food for thought on how to shop for your loved ones and find useful gifts for dyslexics.