I agree that calling it a disability is not right. It's a difference, it might make certain things more challenging, but a disability carries tones of uselessness.

The thing is I also don't think it can be thought of as a trade-off. There's no great balancing factor. I see people who expect every autistic person to be some kind of savant like the Rain Man. You don't automatically get some bonus somewhere else to cancel out the issues you have.

What you do get is a different perspective. You have to learn to cope, and in learning to cope, you learn to do things differently than anyone else might have had to. It's not because nature has somehow compensated you for what it took away, but because you simply had a different experience which forced you to learn differently.

I've got a different issue than dyslexia. I've got an attention deficit issue. There's nothing really 'good' about it, but there's a few things about it. One is that in learning to cope with it I've become very aware of my emotional state, about my motivation and stress, and how they impact my ability to focus. I've kind of come to an understanding that's hard to describe of 'why' this happens to me (in short, I run through my ability to focus very quickly, and it recovers relatively slowly, so I can focus very intensely for long while, but doing so might make me useless for a week. I'm normally living in a deficit because day to day it's hard for me to avoid spending more focus than I recover).

In that I've learned a little about how I function, how and why other people act certain ways, how to have a ton of patience and why it's really important to have downtime (for everyone, but especially for me), how to offload decision-making tasks.

And despite all of that, I still have the same challenges. I mean, I don't have full control over how much stress I'll encounter or how much I'll end up focusing and making decisions in a day. I can try to do things to limit them, but that still happens regardless.

But I gained a perspective that other people don't have, and I care about things that other people prefer to just joke about. I just happen to see things in a different way than the majority and it's important, but it's not a tradeoff, it's a consequence of this difficulty, and the fact that I'm not willing to just say "Hey, I'm disabled, I'm not responsible for myself." It's more like, "Yeah, I have this challenge, I've done this to overcome it. I still have problems doing these things, so I try to avoid having to do those things."

Other people could totally learn the same things that I have, but they just haven't been put in the position to be required to do self-reflection to get through the day.

Similarly, the things you learned because you were dyslexic might be things that other people could totally learn to do, the difference is you've ended up having to do them to get by.

It's like two kids growing up, one kid is forced to carry 30 lb weights as he walks to school. The other kid can get to school however he wants. The result of the kid who carries weights is that he will get stronger. But it's hardly a tradeoff, he's in a situation where he's forced to carry those weights whether he wants to or not, he's not getting anything in return, except the consequences of carrying those weights.

The kid who can ride the bus to school could carry weights instead, however, it's highly unlikely anyone would choose to put themselves through that much difficulty when they could avoid it. So you'd probably end up being stronger than him, but on the other hand, he could go to the gym and train and rest properly, while you're forced to carry those weights whether you want to or not.

I'm just saying there isn't some balance. But we're just forced to cope with things that other people don't have to. This gives us a unique perspective, but not necessarily an exclusive or even balancing factor.

Dyslexia on it's own doesn't give you the ability to do those things. However, it pressures you to learn those things in order to cope with the fact that you can't do it the easy way. There's no unique ability about Dyslexia itself that you could really capitalize on in that respect, but there are things you have definitely learned to do that you can capitalize on because of Dyslexia.

I don't think we should worry about trade offs. I think we should learn about what people can and can't do and why that's important. I agree, if the kid can't spell, it shouldn't be a problem if they can make themselves understood.

However, our pedagogical system is such that we want to offer one curriculum for many people. Writing happens to be a big part of that, and it's hard to measure aptitude when you're struggling to write. We also really love testing, and spelling errors are a really easy thing to grade. It doesn't really matter what we should have, certain issues are going to continue to stand out until we fundamentally change how we teach. And I don't mean relax our standards, I mean each child would have to be taught to their own capacity individually, and that's currently unreasonable.