Dyslexia is a complex disability involving problems with reading and writing. It may soon account for functional illiteracy in twenty five million Americans. However, this condition is not due to intellectual disability. As a matter of fact, many dyslexics are much brighter than average and dyslexia gift may actually be a reality.

The Gift of Dyslexia is the title of a book written by Ronald D Davis, who is himself a dyslexic, and he explores a fascinating idea about dyslexia in this book. Davis speculates that brilliant people like Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison who were dyslexics, instead of succeeding in spite of dyslexia, may have been successful because of the uniquely different way in which dyslexic people think.

Davis solved the puzzle of his condition thirteen years ago, and has since then conducted a program that has helped thousands of dyslexia affected people to read, write and study in the normal way. He propagates the idea that dyslexics suffer not from their learning disability but because of a teaching disability; that most teachers don’t know anything about the dyslexia gift and so don’t know how to teach such children.

Dyslexia gift enables the people afflicted with dyslexia to think multi dimensionally. To be able to change one’s focus, and to see in images may be handicaps in reading but it can be a source of brilliance and creativity too.

Albert Einstein for example said he had imagined riding on a wave of light when he discovered the theory of relativity. The brilliant shift of perspective that this entailed may have been easier for a dyslexic than someone without the dyslexia gift.