This one has bothered me for a while, okay, niggled me, bothered is a bit strong! Are pictures of dyslexic people helpful? You know the kind: moody, black & white, thoughtful, another dollop of moody. They’re the human equivalent of mountain pictures with inspirational quotes, the kind of thing you see in a waiting room, hung on top of grotty wood chip wallpaper painted magnolia.

My gut response is no they aren’t helpful. That would be a very short post so I’d better elaborate a little, and then give a bit of a caveat.

One. What do you know about the people in the picture? Obviously they are dyslexic or supposedly dyslexic. Leonardo da Vinci lived from 1452 – 1519, so it’s a bit hard to know for certain he was dyslexic, though he probably was. But you get the idea, we know next to nothing about these people except dyslexia.

Two. What kinds of things do we not know? Here I mean things that would affect them re dyslexia. ‘What help or accommodations did they receive?’ ‘How were they nurtured?’ ‘What character forming adversity did they face?’ Remember you don’t start where you finish!

Three. Were these people already a genius? Dyslexia is merely an aspect of you, it isn’t everything, I would suspect the IQ of these people would be through the roof and whizzing round space. So dyslexic thinking, dyslexic problem solving, dyslexic creativity was merely an addition to their great talents.

Four. How hard did they work in their field? To quote the Inspiral Carpets – ‘No one ever said this was going to be easy.’ Things that aren’t easy generally take a lot of work and effort. If you spent an hour a day for the next six months on one thing – it would change your life because it would change that thing so much! These people didn’t spend an hour a day at what they were doing they spent a lifetime! So don’t confuse hard work with mere talent.

Five. What societal or familial doors were opened to them? If you try to do something new or different, it’s hard, but why? You’ve no connection, you constantly have to sell yourself, smile a rejection etc. But open doors give you a hearing, that doesn’t mean you’re lifted and laid, you still have to do the hard work, but it does remove one of the hardest parts of the process, one that has nothing to do with talent or ability.

Six. What era did they live in? Had Steve Jobs been 15 years older or younger would Apple have existed given how quickly technology was advancing at that time? I think he would have been an important individual no matter what he did, but his era was critical to the breadth of his importance.

So moody, very moody black & white pictures can’t tell you any of this. It can become dyslexic person = world changing genius, then subliminally, dyslexic person ≠ world changing genius = failure!

So to the caveat, they do show possibility, what can be achieved. It is the initial prompt that things can be different, dyslexia isn’t doom. But to move from a prompt to real help, then you’ll need to know other things about the person, things – like their wider context, their era, their struggles, their methods, the unique help they received, what was not expected or required from them. But much more importantly you need to know about yourself.