Does dyslexia affect typing?

Yes. Dyslexia affects the spelling that typing depends on, so the difficulty comes with you to the keyboard. Typing does not change the sound-to-letter work underneath spelling, so a faster keyboard will not make words easier to spell. The research on typing itself is thin, but the spelling evidence points one way. For the wider picture, see our guide to speech to text for dyslexia and dysgraphia, part of our accessibility and health guides.

Dyslexia is a spelling difficulty, so typing inherits it

A 2018 review defines dyslexia as a difficulty with word-level reading and spelling skills, which it says are in turn caused by phonological deficits, meaning problems with the sound structure of words ¹.

Typing asks you to choose the letters of each word from memory, one key at a time. If the spelling system is less precise, the keyboard shows that directly. A missing letter in a long word or a swapped pair in a familiar one is the kind of error the spelling difficulty predicts.

The errors on a keyboard look like the errors on paper

The clearest study we found compared adults with dyslexia with a control group, using several spelling tasks in Spanish. The adults with dyslexia performed comparably across three output methods: typing, handwriting and oral spelling ². That points to the spelling itself as the source of the difficulty, not the keyboard. On this evidence, a typist with dyslexia who misspells a word on screen is likely to misspell it with a pen too.

The error pattern is also specific. The adults with dyslexia made errors affecting individual letters or letter groups, through substitutions, deletions, additions and transpositions. Their errors were also significantly affected by word length ³. Long words, and words with unusual letter groups, are where a typist is most likely to drop or swap a letter. That reading of the pattern is ours, not a finding stated by the study.

Typing takes longer because each word takes longer to get right

In the same study, the adults with dyslexia were significantly slower than the control group at writing in both tasks ⁴. The measure was the time taken to start a written response in a laboratory task. It is not a typing speed test, and it does not tell you what words per minute a particular person will reach.

Touch typing helps speed and comfort, but not spelling

Touch typing is a separate skill from spelling, and it can make a typist faster. In a 2015 study of higher education students, both the students with developmental learning disabilities and the students without them were significantly faster three months after a touch typing program ⁵. The study measured keyboard speed and did not test reading or spelling, so it cannot show that touch typing will reduce misspellings. For the full study, see does touch typing help dyslexia.

Touch typing may also make it easier to check words as you type them. Touch typists keep their gaze on the line of text on screen, while non-touch typists look down at the keys just before each press ⁶. The study did not test proofreading or dyslexic typists, so treat this as a plausible benefit, not a proven one.

It depends: what the evidence does and does not cover

• The study is small and in Spanish. It included adults with dyslexia and a control group, but the authors limit their conclusion to a language with transparent spelling, "at least in a language with a transparent orthography such as Spanish" ⁷. English spelling is less regular, so the result may be stronger or weaker in English. We did not find a study that measures typing errors in English-speaking adults with dyslexia.
• Typing slips and spelling errors are different. A fast typist can hit the wrong key or skip a letter without a spelling problem at all. The study did not separate these, so you need to check your own errors. Read the words you typed and ask whether you knew the correct spelling.
• Writing volume matters. If you type a few sentences a day, speed may matter little. If you type for hours, speed and tiredness matter more, and a routine that avoids long spelling tasks may be worth more than a faster keyboard.
• Dyslexia varies. Some adults with dyslexia type well and spell well with a spellchecker, and others need a clearer plan. Group averages cannot predict how a particular writer will do.

What to do if typing is slowing you down

1. Sample your errors. Type one page without correcting anything, then list the misspelled words and the typing slips separately. The pattern shows which problem you have.
2. Dictate the first draft. Dictation moves the spelling step to the checking stage, so you do not have to choose each letter while you compose. Our guide to speech to text for dyslexia explains how to pair dictation with read-back. For the checking step, see how to proofread dictated text.
3. Learn touch typing if you type a lot. In one small study, touch typists had less discomfort over a 240-minute typing task ⁸, but do not expect touch typing to fix spelling. Keep the spelling work and the typing work as two separate goals.
4. Ask for an assessment if errors are consistent. Repeated spelling errors across every writing method are a reason to ask for a reading and spelling assessment, not just a typing course. Dysgraphia, the difficulty with writing, is a separate question from dyslexia, and the question on dysgraphia and dyslexia explains how the two differ.

For speaking, not writing, see does dyslexia affect speaking. If the main question is whether speech therapy can help, see can speech therapy help with dyslexia.