Dyslexia is a common learning disorder that affects at least 5% of school children in Europe. The range and severity of the problem varies widely, but the main areas of difficulty are reading, writing, spelling, numeracy, personal organisation and time-keeping. The degree to which individuals may be affected ranges from mild spelling difficulties to severe organisational problems or complete illiteracy.

The AGENT-DYSL project will develop an Intelligent Assistive Reading System which can help school-aged readers who have dyslexia to improve their reading.

Children using the reading system will receive personalized attention by the system, with customized presentation of reading material, based on individual profiles built up through “observation” of each child reading the text on the system’s viewing area and by recognizing their reading errors. These individual profiles are used in deciding how to optimise the text presentation for each child and situation.

In addition to being able to “listen to children reading”, the AGENT-DYSL system will also be able to “see” the children while they read. By employing image analysis techniques, the system can assess the child’s emotional and physical state, and dynamically adapt the document presentation accordingly (a tired child or a child under emotional stress is more likely to have reduced reading performance).

To improve its usability and acceptance by dyslexic children, the AGENT-DYSL system will employ age-appropriate and dyslexia-sensitive user interfaces. AGENT-DYSL’s Intelligent Assistive Reading System expects to magnify its benefits to dyslexic children by incorporating it into the school environment, resulting into an “accommodative learning environment” which also takes into account the context of learning, i.e., interactions among normal and dyslexic children, the teacher and assistants.Pilots will be set up in schools in the UK, Denmark and Greece.

The AGENT-DYSL project started on Sept. 1, 2006 and will last for 36 months. For the project a Pan-European consortium of 9 companies and research organizations has been established, including the Institute of Computer and Communication Systems of the National Technical University of Athens, the Institute of Language and Speech Processing and European Dynamics from Greece, The Dyslexia Institute from the UK, Herning Kommune, Børn og Unge from Denmark, Forschungszentrum Informatik from Germany, Centro De Profesores y Recursos de Gijon from Spain and the University Lucian Blaga of Sibiu from Rumania. The project is coordinated by Atos Origin Spain and the technical direction is the responsibility of the Institute of Communication and Computer Systems in Greece.