Mail Order Dyslexia Testing (One man's story)

Daniel Willemin recounts his experience of taking a dyslexia test

Read this article in Spanish

I have the test, a mail order dyslexia test from Direct Learning. The sudden grip of fear and doubt grabs me as I open the test booklet. What if I don't have the gift, what if I have just been fooling my self these last few years? All my newfound self-confidence starts to wane, then I think "It is just a test, a mail order one at that. The results don't matter, you know what you can do and you do it well!" There are ten or so sub-tests, some I find very easy, others unexpectedly hard. I do my best to elaborate on all the written answers, if you could call it writing. I only print and still the legibility seems poor at best. I use a word processor for the last part and struggle not to correct my errors. They want to see your mistakes for the assessment. I included a story about my struggles in school I had posted to a dyslexia discussion board. No one had responded to my story on the board, but it carried a lot of strong feelings and was one of my favorites. I completed the test and had everything ready to mail before the evening mail pickup. A week or less had past when I received an e-mail from John Bradford, director of Direct Learning. His message said my assessment was completed and in the return mail. To my surprise he also had wonderful things to say about my story and wanted to post it on the Dyslexia Online Magazine site. It still amazes me when people like my writing. Writing seems so foreign and difficult yet somehow satisfying even without the praise. I sent John a version of the story as a "Letter to a friend" and he promptly added it to his site. I felt somewhat less apprehensive as, surely, if I were not dyslexic he wouldn't put my story on his site. It was a Saturday morning when my assessment arrived. I tore it open like a starving dingo would a wild rabbit, (sorry about that picture) the other mail lay at my feet on the curb. I wanted to skim through the report to get to the conclusions but I can't read that way. As I read slowly through the report word for word. I somehow managed to wander into the living room and plop my self into my easy chair. It was about the fourth time, with increasing agitation, that my wife's question as to what I was reading was finally answered. I must say the report was more than I expected and, with minor exceptions, had me pegged to a tee. The report was ten pages long including three pages of helpful related information and contacts. I don't believe you will find a better bargain on this type of test. I am not concluding that distance testing (mail order) is necessarily better than a one-on-one evaluation. However I found it quite adequate for my purposes. The cost of around $150 US is quite a bargain when you consider my son's last evaluation was in the $1500 dollar range. I must add that my son's evaluation covered a lot more than this test covers. Things like audio processing problems, eye tracking problems, and others may not be discovered by this test. However, with a thorough description of a child with these problems they would probably recommend other testing. In my own case there was one such recommendation. Schools will probably vary in their acceptance of the conclusions derived from distance testing. Why wouldn't they? They vary in their acceptance of everything else including the laws. I still believe it is an excellent start for gaining information. I believe this type of testing could be used, not only as a first or second opinion, but also as way to get schools to do testing or even bring about some changes in a child's IEP. Even though this testing method and test it self has limitations it is a relatively low cost way to get a diagnosis. The tests all appear to have been developed by Direct Learning specifically for diagnosing dyslexia and from my experience they do a good job. I diagnosed myself as dyslexic about three years ago . Now with the help of Direct Learning I have professional conformation. It means a lot to me because we dyslexics have enough self-doubts to deal with and one less is always better... Daniel Willemin 2005 Another article by Daniel Willemin is Letter to an Old Friend in which he describes his experiences as a dyslexic pupil at school.

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