Bert,

The changeovers from left to right perception happen with me too, but if I use the wristwatch = left trick, and write a straight line first and then add a circle to the bottom of the line, furthest away from the left (i.e wristwatch, and then the e and then the d then it works well.

My crossovers often happen with up/downs as well as left/rights so my major problem is 2 & 5. If you make a mirror image of the 5 by holding the mirror along the straight line at the top, it almost looks like a 2. It's still the one that gets me most of the time so if I'm reading out a list of figures or entering data with lots of figures I have to double check them. I know as soon as I have said it or typed it that it is wrong but unconsciously I will almost always do it wrong.

I remember getting very frustrated by a teacher in 3rd class who belittled me in front of the whole class because I was having trouble with 2's & 5's, z's & s's, etc and I asked her "how do you know which way is left?" Her reply, ever helpful, was "left is just left!" In all other ways she was a nice teacher and a good teacher, but that answer made me sit there and keep my questions to myself. And no matter how hard I tried her comments about my work were 1) I wasn't trying hard enough and 2) my writing was really messy.

That was in 1963 so she probably knows about dyslexia now, but not then. I only heard about it 20 or so years later, and I didn't get the Irlen lenses until a few years ago. Meanwhile I had been struggling to get through a lot of years of study, including my MBA. So I echo Larry's sentiment, in saying that being dyslexic doesn't mean that I am incapable of learning or studying.

Helen