Understanding the Needs of Arab Learners with Dyslexia for Adaptive Systems

Dyslexia is a universal reading difficulty independent of ethnicity or race. It is sensitive, though, to language and is affected by the language’s structure and orthography. Also, there are non-reading difficulties that co-occur with dyslexia, such as memory problems and low levels of self-esteem. Due to the lack of research in the Arabic language, this study aims to understand the needs of Arab learners with dyslexia in order to design adaptive interactive educational tools (IET)s based on their needs. To this end, the common reading and non-reading difficulties of learners with dyslexia and the features that the special education teachers (SPET)s prefer to either add or avoid when designing any IET, were explored in schools in Saudi Arabia, from the SPETs’ perspective. It was found that vowel letter dyslexia and visual dyslexia are the most common reading difficulties and that dictation difficulty and attention deficit are the most common non-reading difficulties. Hierarchical and Modelling teaching strategies are the teaching approaches that, from the SPETs’ perspective, most improved the reading of learners with dyslexia. Finally, pictures and sounds should be used in the design of IETs, while using many colours and loud sounds should be avoided.