Perseverance in Profile
BEN FOSS: MAKING A DIFFERENCE BY TOM CALARCO
Ben Foss embraces difference. The executive director of Disability Rights Advocates, a law firm that seeks to uphold the rights of the disabled, has trouble reading menus and labels due to his dyslexia, but sees this as a part of the journey his life has taken.
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unique in the way their dyslexia manifests. “One in 10 people are dyslexic and there is a giant set
of variations,” Foss says. “Most people who read this will probably know somebody who is dyslexic. T e key is to sup- port people who are dyslexic, and for dyslexics to be public about who they are. T e more people who admit to it, the less scary and less diff erent it becomes. T is is important for all disabilities.” Like most dyslexics, Foss was identifi ed when he started
elementary school. When he was in second grade he was placed in special education. “T e whole thing has been framed historically as an
think of dyslexia as a specifi c place, unique in many of its characteristics,” Foss says, using a metaphor, “and when I travel there, I’m like an immigrant in a diff erent culture where people rely
on written texts as a way to evaluate my competence.” T e brains of dyslexics are wired
diff erently than most others which results in diffi culty or inability to pro- cess text, he explains. Some renowned dyslexics include Whoopi Goldberg, Richard Branson, Steven Spielberg, and George Patton. But they are all
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educational issue,” he says. “But it’s no more an educational issue than blindness. It has an impact on how you learn, but it’s not something you’re going to teach yourself out of.” Foss says that being placed in special ed made him more
determined to succeed. “It left me feeling that I had something to prove,” he
says, though that didn’t mean it was or even still is easy. “I still operate as someone who is LD,” he says, referring to his acronym for living with doubt, “and I have specifi c areas I don’t go near,” noting that he doesn’t rely on written com- munication for his main contact with people. What he needed to do was fi nd another way to learn.
Foss credits his mother with helping him fi gure out ways to deal with dyslexia so that he could become independent. Nevertheless, he says, having a learning disability requires accommodations and requires one to learn how to deal with being dependent on others.
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