In addition to the collection of oral histories from notable actors in dyslexia's history, we're also building the UK's first comprehensive repository of dyslexia materials. So far, this includes: the collections of the Word Blind Centre, founded in London in the early 1960s and one of the first organisations in the country to engage with dyslexia; the case notes of Bevé Hornsby, who founded one of the first dyslexia clinics at Barts Hospital in the 1970s; and materials from Dyslexia Action, formerly the Dyslexia Institute, one of the leading providers of services and support to dyslexic persons in the UK.
The collections provide a rich source of information on how provision for dyslexia first got off the ground, often on an ad-hoc basis and without the support of goverment. They also reveal a fascinating social history of dyslexia from the 1960s onward, with important demographic and socio-economic data on who was being diagnosed, where they came from and the kinds of issues they were encountering at school. Once the collections have been anonymised, we'll be using the data to shed further light on the early years of dyslexia provision in the UK.
