Research carried out by assistive technology firm in Hampshire claims that 74% of disability recorded in the UK is dyslexia-related, making dyslexia the biggest single disability issue.

Education Development Manager, David Evans said, "Text to speech software including screen-readers has become cheaper, better quality and easier to use in the past few years. And voice recognition software, which can be of enormous assistance to people with dyslexia as well as those with impaired vision, has taken a giant leap forwards with the latest version of Dragon software."

Under the terms of the Disability Discrimination Act public sector employers must make "reasonable" adjustments to facilities to allow access by all staff.

Evans said, "In my experience, more than 90% of assessments in the workplace are compliance driven. It wasn't 'how can we harness this person's talent?' It was 'How quickly can we tick a box?'"

But being 'employee-centred' does not just mean reacting to individual problems, he said. "An individual-centred approach is not about compliance, employers should be saying 'We ought to do this, because we will get more from our staff'. It is active talent management."

In a lot of organisations, it will be a lot easier to take a decision based on this kind of high level approach, he said, "Research from the University of Southampton has identified that nearly 90% of people using assistive technologies reported an improvement in their performance. "