Bridging Accessibility Gaps in Dyslexia Intervention: Non-Inferiority of a Technology-Assisted Approach to Dyslexia Instruction

Abstract

Dyslexia is a highly prevalent learning disability characterized by deficits in specific cognitive and linguistic skills which impair accurate and fluent reading of written words. Intensive, comprehensive, multicomponent interventions are effective in improving outcomes for students with dyslexia, but effective curriculum delivery has traditionally required an educator with substantial training. Many school systems lack sufficient staff with this level of expertise to successfully meet the needs of all their struggling readers. Towards this end, a technology-assisted dyslexia intervention was developed to provide teacher support through a virtual human avatar, resulting in significantly reduced training time while maintaining the comprehensive scope and structure of a traditional intervention model. This paper evaluates the comparative efficacy of the tech-assisted delivery model and the traditional model across two independent substudies. Results from quasi-experimental observational substudies in both laboratory school (n = 82) and public-school (n = 157) samples demonstrate non-inferiority, i.e., comparable student progress in reading and spelling, of the tech-assisted instruction compared to the traditional delivery model. Furthermore, despite differences in the educator training model, implementation fidelity was equivalently strong (>90%) in both groups. Findings provide encouraging evidence towards the scalability of effective dyslexia intervention by providing technology-based support at the level of the teacher. Implications for practice and questions for future research are discussed.