From the Periphery: MYdys; the App That Hands the Text Back

Dustin Rimmey
2 hours ago
4 min read

I stopped at this booth for every student I have ever taught with dyslexia.

Past and present. The ones who sat in the back and pretended the worksheet was not defeating them. The ones who worked twice as hard as everyone else to produce half as much on paper and knew it. The ones who were smart enough to feel the gap between what they understood and what the text on the page was doing to them, and who had no tool in their hands powerful enough to close it.

I stopped because I saw the word dyslexia on a small booth at the edge of the expo hall, and I needed to know what was there.

What was there was MYdys.

Infographic showing three steps for easier reading: take a photo of text, choose custom features, then read, listen, or translate.

What the Text Actually Looks Like

The MYdys website opens with something I have never seen another edtech company do. The tagline — "Let's level the field for dyslexic readers" — appears twice. Once the way you would read it. And once the way a reader with dyslexia might see it: letters transposed, sounds scrambled, the familiar words suddenly unfamiliar.

"Let's lefel the vield vor byslexic reabers."

That is not a typo. That is empathy rendered as design. It is the company showing you, in the first three seconds of their website, that they understand the experience they are building for — not as an abstraction, not as a demographic, but as a daily, lived, exhausting reality that millions of students bring into classrooms where the text does not move for them.

MYdys moves the text.

What It Does

The premise is as simple as it is powerful. A student, an adult, or anyone points their phone camera at any text. A textbook page. A restaurant menu. A museum information sign. A homework sheet. A job listing. A slide on a classroom projector. Anything with words on it.

MYdys scans it and hands it back transformed.

Font size. Letter spacing. Word spacing. Line spacing. Background color. Font color. The letters and numbers most commonly confused by dyslexic readers: b and d, 6 and 9, p and q, are highlighted or color-coded so they stop moving. Built-in audio transcription so the text can be listened to rather than read. Instant translation into 70 languages, including non-Latin scripts.

Every single one of those adjustments is made by the student. Not pre-set by a teacher, not locked by an administrator, not decided by a system that thinks it knows what this particular reader needs. The student opens the app, scans the text, and makes it work for their brain. Their font. Their colors. Their spacing. Their pace.

That is not accommodation. That is autonomy. And for students who have spent their entire academic lives waiting for someone to hand them a modified version of a text that may or may not actually reflect how they process information, the distinction is enormous.

Infographic on customizable reading features, with a smiling blue character and text about font size, highlights, audio transcription, translation, and sharing

Why I'm Absolutely In LOVE!

I have been a classroom teacher for nearly twenty years. In that time I have watched students with dyslexia navigate a system that was not built for them and has not fundamentally changed to accommodate them, despite everything we know about how dyslexic brains work and what they need.

The accommodations exist on paper. Extended time. Preferential seating. Text-to-speech software on a school-issued device, if the device works that day, if the software is loaded, if the student remembered to bring it, if the classroom environment supports using it without drawing attention.

But there is a gap between what the accommodation system provides and what a student with dyslexia actually needs in the moment. The moment is often not in a testing center with a proctor and an IEP in hand. The moment is a menu at a restaurant they went to with their family. A sign at a museum on a field trip. A job application they are filling out alone at a kitchen table at nineteen years old, and the words are doing the thing the words always do, and there is no teacher, no proctor, no accommodation request form, and no one to ask.

MYdys works in all of those moments. Because it is on their phone. Because it works on any text. Because it belongs to them and not to the system.

MYdys has been recognized by the CES Innovation Awards, the NYC Department of Education, the Tech and Learning Awards for both primary and secondary education, and is a certified B Corporation, which means it has met rigorous standards for social and environmental impact, not just commercial viability. This is not a startup chasing a market. This is a tool built with a genuine purpose and is properly recognized for it.

The free version includes 50 credits to try all the main features. The Discovery plan is $3.99 per month. The Premium plan, with essentially unlimited use, is $6.99 per month. And MYdys may be eligible for reimbursement through HSA or FSA accounts with a letter of medical necessity, which is worth knowing and worth sharing with families.

There is also MYdys Edu, a classroom-specific version designed for school deployment. If you are a teacher, an administrator, or a special education coordinator reading this, that is your link.

Try It

🔗 Download MYdys: https://mydys.app/en 🔗

MYdys Edu for classrooms: https://mydys.app/edu/en/

You can also use the information in this image to get a free 3-month license to try it out when the school year resumes!