An Empirical Investigation of the Experiences of Dyslexic Software Engineers

TL;DR

This study addresses the lack of empirical insight into the experiences of dyslexic software engineers by applying the basic stage of Socio-Technical Grounded Theory to triangulated data from 10 interviews, 3 blogs, and Reddit discussions. It finds that reading and writing difficulties strongly affect learning to program, yet dyslexic engineers can and do succeed in SE with generic accommodations (spell-checkers, TTS, AI tools) and SE-specific tools (code completion, linters, IDE features), while also leveraging cognitive strengths like visual thinking and creativity. The work highlights actionable implications for practice—promoting inclusive teams, visual documentation, and broad accessibility of tooling—and identifies avenues for future research, including what makes code more readable to dyslexic programmers and development of a fuller theory of dyslexia in SE.

Abstract

Dyslexia is a common learning disorder that primarily impairs an individual's reading and writing abilities. In adults, dyslexia can affect both professional and personal lives, often leading to mental challenges and difficulties acquiring and keeping work. In Software Engineering (SE), reading and writing difficulties appear to pose substantial challenges for core tasks such as programming. However, initial studies indicate that these challenges may not significantly affect their performance compared to non-dyslexic colleagues. Conversely, strengths associated with dyslexia could be particularly valuable in areas like programming and design. However, there is currently no work that explores the experiences of dyslexic software engineers, and puts their strengths into relation with their difficulties. To address this, we present a qualitative study of the experiences of dyslexic individuals in SE. We followed the basic stage of the Socio-Technical Grounded Theory method and base our findings on data collected through 10 interviews with dyslexic software engineers, 3 blog posts and 153 posts on the social media platform Reddit. We find that dyslexic software engineers especially struggle at the programming learning stage, but can succeed and indeed excel at many SE tasks once they master this step. Common SE-specific support tools, such as code completion and linters are especially useful to these individuals and mitigate many of the experienced difficulties. Finally, dyslexic software engineers exhibit strengths in areas such as visual thinking and creativity. Our findings have implications to SE practice and motivate several areas of future research in SE, such as investigating what makes code less/more understandable to dyslexic individuals.

Figures (2)

• Figure 1: Data Collection and Analysis Steps. The rounded rectangles on the left depict data sources. The rectangles in the middle depict analysis steps. Finally, the rounded rectangles on the right depict the resulting themes.
• Figure 2: Initial Categories on Experiences of Dyslexic Software Engineers.