Megan's Story: Unlocking the Imagination December 06 2014, 0 Comments

by Bethany Wagner

Growing up, Megan was a smart kid. She understood math concepts, grasped history, and understood verbal lectures well. She even liked to invent her own stories.

And yet she struggled with low grades all through elementary and high school.

Megan grew up with dyslexia, making reading difficult. “Reading assignments challenged and frustrated me, and I couldn’t even read the vocabulary words on the whiteboard,” said Megan. Sometimes she was able to read the larger words, but smaller words like “to” and “an” escaped her, making sentences difficult to understand.

Tests also proved an obstacle, as Megan struggled to read test questions and respond in writing. “I was so frustrated as my test scores declined,” she said. “I understood what I was learning in classes, but I couldn’t put it down on paper within the time limit.” In her free time, reading had no appeal. “Just reading a few pages in a book took so much energy and time, so I never read books for fun,” she said.

But all this changed when she encountered the Open LORE Read software. Through the text-to-speech capabilities and text-tracking, Megan found a whole new world of reading opened to her. “Open LORE helps me understand what I’m reading—from books to e-mails—and at a pace I can understand,” she said.

Since using Open LORE Read, Megan has dived for the first time into the stories of Sherlock Holmes and Pride and Prejudice, available through the Open LORE Classics Library. “These are important, meaningful works that I’ve never actually been able to read before,” said Megan. “Books like these engage the imagination—it’s like playing a movie inside your head.”

When she’s not working as a dental hygienist, Megan still enjoys using her imagination to create her own stories, and now with Open LORE, she can put them to paper. “I can type my stories directly into the software and have it read back to me so I can proofread,” she said.

Megan tried other reading software without success before coming across Open LORE, but Open LORE Read’s unique set of features helped her overcome reading challenges. “To anyone struggling with dyslexia—Open LORE can truly help.”