From Our Founder

Thank you for visiting the Cognition Labs website.
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By definition reading has a visual component and what that component looks like today was determined long ago by the printing press. If a reader can manage that formulation of sound/symbol relationships, reading transpires. However, 20% of readers struggle. Historically, they were considered “lazy” or “needing to try harder.” Over time, as we have learned about the brain, we re-named those struggling readers as “dyslexic” and defined the struggle in the psychiatric book of mental disorders—the DSM-V—as a “Reading Disorder.” Now, those readers are labeled as neuroatypical, neurodivergent, neurodiverse. Whatever we call it, the “problem” continues to reside in the reader. For more than 40 years, I have been helping “those students” learn to read. About 10 years ago, as I sat at my computer re-typing the pages of a book to suit the needs of a young struggling reader as I had done so many times before, I realized that a computer could be programmed to change the look of text to meet each reader’s unique visual perceptual needs. I saw that the difficulties with the visual component of reading could be lifted and instead of the “problem” residing in the student, it could reside in the text and the text could changed and diversely applied. It was in that moment that CogniLens was conceived. I had already learned that some students read better from right to left, are aided by increases in the size and spacing of letters and words, are helped when the confusing letters, such as b and d are made easily recognizable, as well as many other changes; AND that those changes easily combined and particular to the student made reading easier and more fluent.

CogniLens provides the quick easy opportunity to change the look of text to suit the individual’s unique visual perceptual needs. Whether you are “dyslexic,” a second language learner trying to read English, or just feel better when text is bigger or looks different, this app will help you.

Questions or feedback? Feel free to share your thoughts. Contact us.