I am a chartered speech and language therapist with wide-ranging experience of reading and writing issues, including work in the hospital sphere, language preschool work, adult education and software development. Spella Ltd is my consultancy business in the field of reading and writing difficulties. Through Spella, founded in 2001, I assess children and adults with reading and writing problems and engage in various reading-related projects. For example, I have been part of two EU projects, I’ve recorded two DVDs for teachers, and parents and written a book for teachers of young schoolchildren. I am also a frequent speaker at conferences, both in Sweden and abroad. Currently, my main areas of interest are dyslexia in different languages and English as a second language for people with dyslexia.

For several years, I was member of the board of the Swedish Dyslexia Association and a member of the editorial board of its journal. I have also been on the committee run by the Swedish National Agency of Higher Education to advise on dyslexia assessor qualifications. In recent years, when I’ve been combining working-life with being a Mum, I’ve cut down on committee and advisory work.

Besides my work with Spella, I am engaged in developing assistive technology through Oribi Ltd. Oribi has developed programs that are well-known and widely-used in Sweden: Stava Rex, an intelligent spellchecker for Swedish-speaking users, and SpellRight, a spellchecker aimed Swedish-speaking people who write in English as a second language. Oribi has also produced a spellchecker for the English-speaking market: VeritySpell, distributed by IanSyst Ltd in the UK, www.dyslexic.com. The program was released in 2010. Verity Spell picks up on severe errors and presents suggestions with explanatory sentences to help the user choose the right word.

Material by Bodil Andersson Rack in English
An article in English on dyslexia terminology, official regulations and approach in Sweden can be found here (pp 79-94). I wrote the chapter about Swedish dyslexia practice for ”The International Book of Dyslexia” (2003) and part of a chapter on ICT for the conference book of the 2004 BDA International Conference in Warwick, UK, March 2004 (”Dyslexia in Context”, edited by Gavin Reid and Angela Fawcett, Whurr publishers). In an EU project on ICT and HE (2004), Spella Ltd was the Swedish representative.

Download my CV here, if you wish.