The start-up company Dyslexico is receiving a $500,000 Dyslexia Research Grant from the Nebraska Department of Education.
The company uses artificial intelligence, or AI, models to help dyslexics with reading and writing, provides dyslexia-friendly fonts and offers multiple other tools to make learning easier. Co-founder and Chief Operations Officer Tristan Curd said the funding will expand their AI model and help schools across Nebraska.
“We're also going to use it to partner with schools in Nebraska to provide dyslexic code to their students and get information in that way while providing the product to them at no charge," Curd said.
The company was started by Grace Clausen, who is now its Chief Executive Officer. Clausen and her younger sister both have dyslexia. When her younger sister was diagnosed, Clausen was inspired to create something that would make her educational experience easier. She began working on the AI model with Curd and fellow Co-Founder Bridget Peterkin, who is now its Chief Technical Officer.
With the new grant, Clausen said she's looking forward to increasing the number of educational tools for teachers.
“It's really going to supercharge the educator aspect of this," she said. "We really see the potential of Dyslexico code to sort of guide the intervention and guide the sort of education and educational achievements of dyslexic students.”
She said one of the main issues for dyslexics is a lack of resources.
“There are a lot of really fantastic advocates, but they’re spread so thin,” Clausen said. “While there is the opportunity, the enthusiasm, it's really a question of resources and how we can make these people be able to affect the most students possible.”
The founders hope to integrate their program with schools throughout the state providing tools like text-to-speech and speech-to-text, checks for grammar and writing errors, and morphologic, phonological syntactic aid. They also educate people about the disability. According to Peterkin, there are a lot of misconceptions about dyslexia that they are working to change.
“There's definitely a lack of knowledge around dyslexia of what it is, what it isn't,” said Peterkin. “It's not something that makes somebody unable to achieve or unable to succeed, nor is it something that is insurmountable."
The company's mission is to make learning easier for those with the disability. Clausen said the grant will further their goal of making dyslexia more manageable.
“We just want to be able to kind of change that narrative a little bit, provide tools, and be able to make it so it's not so scary when parents find out their kid has dyslexia and have to navigate kind of how to make sure they're getting the best education," Clausen said.
To know how the company got its start take a look at the software companies’ first months off the ground.