Persistent homology, a method from topological data analysis, extracts robust, multi-scale features from data. It produces stable representations of time series by applying varying thresholds to their values (a process known as a filtration). We develop novel filtrations for time series and introduce topological methods for the analysis of eye-tracking data, by interpreting fixation sequences as time series, and constructing “hybrid models” that combine topological features with traditional statistical features. We empirically evaluate our method by applying it to the task of dyslexia detection from eye-tracking-while-reading data using the Copenhagen Corpus, which contains scanpaths from dyslexic and non-dyslexic L1 and L2 readers.1 Our hybrid models outperform existing approaches that rely solely on traditional features, showing that persistent homology captures complementary information encoded in fixation sequences. The strength of these topological features is further underscored by their achieving performance comparable to established baseline methods. Importantly, our proposed filtrations outperform existing ones.

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When Dorenda Brit­ten was dia­gnosed with dys­lexia, she was 74 years old – but things sud­denly fell into place.

The respec­ted Christ­ch­urch designer, busi­ness­wo­man and prop­erty developer, a long-time judge of the Hi-tech Awards and sis­ter of the late designer and innov­ator John Brit­ten, chan­nelled her new-found know­ledge into an organ­isa­tion that aims to uncover hid­den cap­ab­il­it­ies and tal­ent within com­pan­ies.

Her start-up, Unlock Innov­a­tion, estab­lished in 2024, is now a respec­ted con­sultancy that helps work­places get the best out of dys­lexic people and chal­lenges mis­un­der­stand­ings about the learn­ing dif­fer­ence.

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The piece explores dyslexia from a child’s perspective – school, language, identity, and what it feels like when the letters on the page refuse to cooperate.

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Which of the report’s findings or results do you find most encouraging? And which is most troubling?

There is a lot to be encouraged by here. The growing understanding of phonics and word recognition among teachers is promising, as is the finding that 81 percent of respondents recognize the importance of breaking words into parts to support struggling readers. We were also especially glad to see the report include information on understanding the needs of students with dyslexia and English learners.

At the same time, several findings are deeply concerning. We are troubled by the continued finding that only 2 percent of teachers report learning evidence-aligned reading practices during their pre-service training, as opposed to the training they receive after years of teaching. This means the overwhelming majority of teachers have been entering classrooms without the knowledge they need. It is also troubling that 56 percent of teachers still associate dyslexia primarily with letter reversal. Finally, we are also concerned by the “science of reading gap” in high-poverty schools and at intermediate and secondary grade levels.

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