Only 25% of dyslexic Scots say their adjustments help

Forty-one percent. That's the share of dyslexic adults in Scotland who said they received appropriate workplace adjustments, in a survey of 1,420 people run by Dyslexia Scotland with the University of Glasgow and launched in October 2024.

The second number matters more. Of the people who did get adjustments, only 25% called them very or extremely helpful, and 75% said they were not helpful or only slightly to moderately so (Dyslexia Scotland/University of Glasgow survey, reported by Daily Record's Insider, October 2024).

So the common advice, "just ask for adjustments and you'll be sorted," skips a step. Getting something is the easy half. Getting something that works is where most people stall.

What the survey found

The report ran from November to May and drew on 1,420 adults in Scotland. It was supported by the law firm Morton Fraser MacRoberts, and launched at the Scottish Parliament during Dyslexia Awareness Week Scotland 2024.

Beyond the headline figures, 80% of respondents named the cost of an assessment as a barrier to getting support, and 75% said dyslexia had a negative effect on their job performance (Insider, October 2024). Those two facts sit uncomfortably next to each other. People are struggling at work, and the support on offer mostly isn't touching it.

The examples of adjustments that employers gave are the usual ones: verbal instructions alongside written ones, extra time for tasks, dyslexia-friendly fonts and colours (Morton Fraser MacRoberts, October 2024). None of those is silly. The trouble is that they're generic, and your job isn't.

If your adjustment is on a list in an HR policy, it may have been chosen for dyslexia in general rather than for your Tuesday.

Why a real adjustment can still fail

Think about who picks the adjustment. In most workplaces it's a manager or an HR adviser, often within a day or two of a disclosure, often from a short menu. Nobody sits down with your actual calendar.

So a font change gets agreed for a person whose real problem is a 40-message chat thread that scrolls past before they've decoded it. Extra time gets granted on a report, while the meeting that produces the report still runs at full speed.

The adjustment exists on paper. The friction doesn't move, and the person starts to wonder whether they're asking for too much.

A smaller survey points the same way. The Chartered Institute for Archaeologists asked its members about dyslexia in 2024 and got 209 responses. Of those who disclosed to an employer, half reported no problems afterwards, and 37% of individuals said they'd met discrimination at work linked to dyslexia (CIfA Dyslexia Survey Summary Report, 2024).

This is a membership sample, so treat it as a signal and not a national rate. It still shows the same pattern: disclosure alone doesn't settle things.

An adjustment fails when it targets the label instead of the task, and that's fixable once you can name the task.

Three myths hiding inside "I've got adjustments"

The first is that having adjustments means the employer has done its job. Legally, it hasn't, necessarily.

In the UK, the duty to make reasonable adjustments under section 20 of the Equality Act 2010 covers the disadvantage you face. If that disadvantage is still there, the conversation isn't finished.

The second is that asking again looks ungrateful. It doesn't, to anyone who has run a team.

A manager who hears "the font change helped a bit, but the real hold-up is X" gets something they can act on. A manager who hears nothing assumes the problem is solved.

The third is that the fix has to come from the employer's menu. It can come from outside it.

In the UK, Access to Work can pay for specialist software, coaching and equipment, and our Access to Work calculator shows roughly what an application could cover. In the US, the Job Accommodation Network (JAN) offers free, confidential guidance on specific accommodation ideas at askjan.org.

Treat the first adjustment as a first draft, because nobody gets it right on the first go.

What a task-based adjustment looks like

Say you're an account manager and your worst hour of the week is the Monday status email chain. A generic adjustment gives you a dyslexia-friendly font. A task-based one changes the process: the sender puts the decision needed in the first line, keeps it to one ask per email, and you get 30 minutes of protected time to answer.

Say you're a developer and code review comments arrive as long paragraphs. The adjustment might be a short bullet summary at the top of each review, plus permission to run comments through text-to-speech before the stand-up.

Neither of those costs much. Both come from knowing the task, which is exactly the information the original adjustment conversation usually skipped.

The cheapest adjustments are usually the specific ones, because they fix one thing instead of gesturing at everything.

The call: audit your adjustment in 10 minutes

Here's what the evidence implies you should do. Before you ask for anything new, find out whether the current adjustment is doing its job.

Pick the one task that costs you the most time or the most stress each week. Write down what the adjustment is supposed to fix, and whether it has. If it hasn't, write down what actually happens, in one or two sentences, with a number if you can (minutes lost, errors caught late, messages re-read).

Then ask for one change, not a rebuild. A request like "Reading the weekly report in Excel takes me about an hour; could I get the summary as plain text by Thursday so I can use text-to-speech?" is hard to say no to. A request like "I need more support" is easy to nod at and forget.

Send it in writing and keep a dated copy. If you haven't disclosed yet, or you're not sure how much to say, the disclosure guide walks through the options before you put anything on paper.

One task, one number, one specific ask: that's the format that gets a better adjustment instead of a polite reply.

What to do if the answer is no

Sometimes the reply is "we've already done something." That's worth a calm second message that repeats the task, the problem and the numbers, and asks what alternatives the employer would consider.

Keep the tone practical. You're solving a work problem together, and a dated paper trail protects you if the conversation stalls.

If it still goes nowhere, free routes exist. UK employees can contact ACAS for advice, including early conciliation if a claim is on the table. US employees can call JAN for accommodation ideas, or contact the EEOC if they believe a refusal is discriminatory.

Keep the two systems apart: the rules, the time limits and the remedies differ.

For a wider look at who gets what, browse the full article archive, where the Access to Work and tribunal pieces sit alongside this one.

You don't have to be right about the perfect fix, only clear about the task that isn't working.

The short version

Forty-one percent of dyslexic adults in the Dyslexia Scotland survey got adjustments, and only a quarter of that group rated them very or extremely helpful. The gap between "has an adjustment" and "has one that works" is the real problem, and it's usually a mismatch between a generic fix and a specific task.

Name the task and what it costs you, then ask for one change. Do it again in three months, because jobs change and the best adjustment changes with them.