Dyslexia: How Scottish voiceover artist connected to BBC Radio Scotland manages her successful career and learning difficulty

Scottish voiceover artist Blanche Anderson - known as the voice of BBC Radio Scotland and Lidl’s checkout tills - sat down with the Scotsman’s health correspondent Joseph Anderson to talk about succeeding in a creative industry and managing her dyslexia.

A Scottish voiceover artist – known as the voice of BBC Radio Scotland and Lidl’s checkout tills – has revealed her battle with dyslexia in a bid to encourage similar young Scots to challenge themselves.

Blanche Anderson, originally from Kirkcaldy, Fife, said that, despite reading for a living, “dyslexia has been a huge challenge for me my whole life. A challenge I now overcome on a daily basis”.

“Sight reading is a daily part of my job,” said the 32-year-old Fifer, “as is reading in different accents and also reading long form scripts of over 5,000 words.

Blanche Anderson, voiceover artist with dyslexia who is the station voice of BBC Radio Scotland and Lidl tills

“My teachers at school all say I should have ‘tried harder’, but now I’ve made my biggest struggle a full-time career.”

Dyslexia is a common learning difficulty that mainly causes problems with reading, writing and spelling - but unlike a learning disability, intelligence isn't affected.

The NHS estimates that up to one in every ten people in the UK has some degree of dyslexia.

Dyslexia is a lifelong problem that can present challenges on a daily basis, but support is available to improve reading and writing skills and help those with the problem be successful at school and work.

The British Dyslexia Association (BDA) says there is a “misconception” that dyslexia just affects the ability to read and write.

“If this were true, it would be much easier to identify,” the BDA believes.

“In fact dyslexia can have an effect on areas such as coordination, organisation and memory.

“Each person with dyslexia will experience the condition in a way that is unique to them and as such, each will have their own set of abilities and difficulties.”

Like many children, Blanche was only suspected of being dyslexic in high school, and said she has “lots of bad memories at primary school because they thought I was just lazy”.

“With dyslexia, your IQ is higher than your reading and writing ability would suggest,” said Blanche.

“At school, I was doing much better in subjects where you didn’t rely on reading and writing as much.”

Despite this, Blanche has gone into a career she says is “very reliant on reading, reading in huge emphasis, with different accents - lots of sight reading - and the sorts of things you wouldn’t expect a dyslexic person to be able to handle.”

However, she admits that for the first six years of her career she used to hide the fact she has dyslexia from clients, due to fear of stigma affecting her work, “because of how competitive the industry is”.

Now, she wants other dyslexic people to not be daunted by going into careers where reading and writing is integral - and not compare yourself to others.

“I feel like if I have done it, and read on a daily basis, they can definitely do so,” explained Blanche.

“A big thing for me was comparing myself to others - that whole ‘comparison is the thief of joy’ thing.

“I would say that if you’re dyslexic, relish in your skills and the things that you can do.”