RESOURCES
NURTURING 21st CENTURY CHILDRENApps for dyslexia & a teen
MYSTERY SERIES
READING APPS FOR DYSLEXIA AND LEARNING
DISABILITIES
An estimated 35 million school-going children in India suf-
fer from mild to severe dyslexia — a learning disorder that
involves difficulty in reading due to problems identifying
speech sounds and learning how they relate to letters and
words.
Here are two apps which have been specially developed
to help dyslexic children learn and understand better:
Augmenta11y. An Augmented Reality (AR) enabled
app, it helps people with learning disabilities read signage,
newspapers, texts and other material in the real world.
A main feature of the app is real-time text detection.
Once the user clicks and uploads a picture of the text on
the app, it uses an offline machine learning model to pro-
vide instant text de-
tection using Optical
Character Recogni-
tion (OCR).
There are options
to change the font
style of the text, including a special font, Open Dyslexic
designed by researchers specifically for people with dys-
lexia. The font helps users focus on the words and pre-
vents confusion between alphabets like ‘b’-‘d’, ‘a’-‘o’, ‘u’-
‘v’ and jumping between lines. Augmenta11y also allows
users to adjust line height and letter spacing of the text,
making it easier to distinguish characters from each other.
Read aloud is another option, you can download it free-of-
charge on Google Playstore.
MDA Avaz. Developed by
the Madras Dyslexia Asso-
ciation, this app uses state-
of-the-art technology, works
largely off-line and is based
on time-tested reading meth-
odologies followed at MDA.
This app also uses OCR
technology and can be used to read any printed material.
Although available on Playstore for Rs.2,000 per year, it
can be subscribed at Rs 600 annually by directly e-mailing
MDA.Mini P. recommends reading apps to aid children with dyslexia and
a new mystery series for teenagersTHE ENOLA HOLMES MYSTERIES BY NANCY SPRINGER
(Simon & Schuster Books)
This young adult fiction series of detective novels by
American author Nancy Springer stars Enola Holmes
as the 14-year-old sister of an already-famous and much
older Sherlock Holmes. It borrows characters and settings
from the Sherlock Holmes compendium, but the Enola
character, is, well, quite the character. The first book, The
Case of the Missing Marquess,
and the fifth, The Case of the
Cryptic Crinoline, were nomi-
nated for the Edgar Awards
for Best Juvenile Mystery in
2007 and 2010, respectively.
In The Case of the Missing
Marquess, Enola’s mother
disappears on the latter’s
14th birthday. Brothers
Sherlock and Mycroft think she has left of her own voli-
tion, but Enola discovers there is more to the mysterious
disappearance than meets the eye. Meanwhile, Mycroft
insists that Enola attends boarding school, but she runs
away to London instead, and begins to crack cases. Inevi-
tably she meets Dr John Watson and Inspector Lestrade
in London.
In The Case of the Left-Handed Lady, Enola tries to trace
Lady Cecily Alistair, who
disappeared from her
bedroom, while dodging
Sherlock and Mycroft.
And in The Case of the Bi-
zarre Bouquets it’s Dr. John
Watson, who goes missing.
Children are likely to
enjoy this page-turner
mystery series.