Abhishek Bachchan

At the age of nine, Abhishek Bachchan was diagnosed with dyslexia. However, the actor did not try to hide his dyslexia from fans or the media, nor did he let it prevent him from becoming one of Bollywood’s most popular actors. Rather, he has been spreading the word about this tale and advocating for learning disability awareness organizations.

Did you know that only 10% of the population has dyslexia?

• 40% of self-made millionaires are dyslexic.
• 40% of people working in technology are dyslexic.
• 35% of successful entrepreneurs are dyslexic.

Steve Jobs

The American business magnate who founded Apple too was dyslexic. But, at the same time, he also had intellectual giftedness that gave him intellectual ability significantly higher than the average people. As a child, Jobs was an outsider and considered an odd, word-blind student who just didn’t fit in with the rest of his peers. Schools did not recognize dyslexia as it is recognized today and therefore, students with learning disorders like these were neglected.

Numerous time he was told that he would go nowhere in life, however he decided to change his future for himself.

Tom Cruise

The famous Mission Impossible actor speaks openly about the struggles he experienced because of his dyslexia. Cruise claims he was functionally illiterate when he graduated high school and even had trouble reading scripts at the beginning of his career. He has said his dyslexia was something he felt he had to hide in school but has since learned to accept and overcome thanks to strategy interventions.

Richard Branson

Billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson said his childhood struggles with dyslexia led him to gain adaptive thinking skills that later in life have become major advantages. In speaking about his experiences and how they’ve shaped him, Branson said he wants the stigma around dyslexia to end, and for the next generations to learn how to turn their difficulties into opportunities to think outside the norm.

Cher

Cher, an acclaimed entertainer, has struggled with both dyslexia and dyscalculia, a learning condition which makes math extra challenging. Not only did words feel like another language, numbers also felt foreign, she said in her autobiography, The First Time.

Teachers also could not figure out what was holding Cher back, she said, noting that the student was not living up to her potential in the classroom. It wasn’t until she was already a mother of two that she discovered the source of her learning difficulties: dyslexia.

Cher said she still has “no relationship” with numbers today, and struggles with reading at times, but she’s learned to embrace her dyslexia as something that makes her unique.

Thomas Alva Edison

American Inventor

His teacher suggested that his mother take him out of school after only three months because he was so "addled".

His father thought he was "stupid".

He invented the incandescent electric light, the phonograph, the motion picture camera and projector, the alkaline storage battery, patented over one thousand inventions.

Winston Churchill

Prime Minister of Britain, Author and Orator

He had a writing disability and always functioned at the bottom of his class. He had to repeat some early grades. He joked that "by being so long in the lowest grades, I got into my bones the structure of the ordinary English sentence - which is a noble thing".

He wrote "The second world war" (six volumes).

Hans Christian Andersen

Danish Author

He wrote plays, novels, travel books and poems. His best-known tales include ‘The Princess and the Pea’, ‘The Nightingale’, ‘The Emperor's New Clothes’, ‘The Snow Queen’, ‘The Ugly Duckling’ among others.

He has described his time in school as the bitterest time of his life. He preferred memorizing stories rather than learning to read. He would retell stories to anyone who would listen, and he would complement his story telling by imitating ballet dancers or acrobats while telling the story.

His stories have been translated into more than 150 languages. Many of his stories have been adapted into movies by Walt Disney (The little mermaid).