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Comment by smeej | Hacker News Reader

What kinds of feedback have come up about this for people with reading challenges like dyslexia?

The closest comparison I have to this is reading in school where it became very obvious who the fast, skilled readers were and who had to work harder to understand the text, which caused a lot of anxiety for the slower readers (which didn't help).

I can imagine a wide variety of possible outcomes for this, from accommodations being made to people just being a lot more mature as adults, but I'm also guessing there has been some trial and error about this at Amazon and some best practices have emerged.

Does anyone here know what they are?

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Glad you asked, I have dyslexia, and I was very worried about writing, much less reading fast enough. In general we budget 4 mins per page, that said the meeting usually starts with a "here's the doc, please read until XXX and let us know if you're ready sooner". And then a "time check how are people doing?" and often you'll hear "I need N more minutes". And back to reading.

I was very worried about this part of the experience because of my challenges, I'm not the world's fastest reader, but over time I got comfortable just saying "I need 5 more minutes". Or I'll say "I'm on page N".

That said we do have some leaders who read incredibly fast, for them I always include some good appendices so they stay "in the room and on topic" rather than float off into their email.

This is off-topic but your comment reminds me of a principle I learned when I was briefly studying to be a teacher, use extra enrichment material rather than tracking (ie, having the kids go further ahead in the main material) for advanced students so that the slower students do not feel discouraged or left behind and the faster students do not get bored.

I got a book thrown at me in middle school by a teacher who thought I was lying that I'd finished the whole textbook when he told me to try working ahead if I was bored.

When I handed him a stack of all the end of chapter tests to prove it we had to schedule a meeting with the principal to figure out what I should do next. It involved having to go to another school in the morning because mine didn't have anything else to teach me, and I can't help but think you're right that enrichment would have been a better solution for everybody than that was!

I remember in junior school there where about three or four of us who the teachers let read at our own pace.

This is exactly the sort of information I was looking for! Thanks for sharing!

I just proposed this, with your suggestions to my team. We've been experiencing meeting creep and having some trouble staying focused on one meeting topic at a time, and I think this will help us a lot!

For my team, we take average reading speeds for the main document then add extra time for the appendices. This means that slower readers will at least get to read the main document. Also, providing documents in advance will give those who need time and technical assistance, the ability to take the steps they need prior.

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