Alessandria for dyslexic and ADHD students
If reading and writing at speed is the part that costs you, a lecture is the worst possible format: it happens once, fast, and you have to listen and transcribe at the same time. Alessandria writes the whole lecture out shortly after you upload it, with a glossary of the terms, and can read the notes aloud — from the first week, without waiting for anything to be assessed or approved.
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A lecture asks you to do two things at once
Listening and writing are one task for some people and two for others. If handwriting is effortful, or if holding a sentence in your head while the next one arrives is effortful, then every minute spent writing is a minute not spent following — and the lecture doesn’t pause for either.
What you end up with afterwards tends to be notes that are hardest to read exactly where the lecture was hardest to follow. The gap compounds: the part you understood least is the part with the thinnest notes.
It isn’t a question of effort. It is that the format asks for two things simultaneously, and only one of them can be done at a time.
What the system already offers, honestly
The UK is unusually well set up here, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. Disabled Students’ Allowance funds real support — assistive software, equipment, study skills sessions, and in many cases a note-taker: an actual person who takes notes for you in lectures. Universities also make reasonable adjustments, and most now record lectures as a matter of course.
If you are eligible, apply. It is the single most valuable thing available to you, and this page is not an argument against it.
- It takes time. Support can take up to 14 weeks to be put in place after approval — a good part of a first semester, and the assessment has to happen first.
- It needs evidence. A formal diagnosis is required, and plenty of people reach university without one, or discover the issue during their degree.
- A note-taker’s notes are their notes. Someone else decided what was worth writing down, and what could be compressed.
None of that is a flaw in the system. It is what having a human intermediary means: their judgement about what mattered, not yours.
And a recorded lecture still isn’t a written one
Most lectures are captured now, which sounds like it solves this. It doesn’t, quite. A recording gives you the lecture back at the same speed it happened, with no way to skim, no way to search for the bit you missed, and no way to find where a term was defined without listening for it.
Re-listening to fifty minutes to recover four is a common way to lose an evening — and it is a worse trade if sustained attention is the thing that costs you.
What Alessandria changes
The whole lecture, in writing
You upload the recording and shortly afterwards the lecture is written out from the first minute to the last. Not a summary — the whole thing, so the parts you didn’t follow are there too, in text you can read at your own pace.
Notes organised by topic, and a glossary
Alongside the full write-up: the notes arranged by theme, and the terms that were said in that lecture, defined from the way the lecturer used them.
It can read it aloud
The notes can be read out by the app. If reading long stretches of text is the effortful part, listening to material that is already organised is a different task from re-listening to a raw recording.
And it works from the first week of term. There is no assessment to book, no evidence to submit, and nothing to wait for.
What this is not
Alessandria is not assistive technology in the formal sense, it is not a substitute for reasonable adjustments, and it is not something to put on a needs assessment. It is a tool that turns a lecture into text — useful for the same reason a note-taker is useful, and with a different set of limits.
It also shares nothing: there is no function to send documents to anyone, no shared folder, and no download. The only way out is publishing your notes to your own Notion.
No slides, no PDFs, no images, no video: a lecture here is an audio recording or a text file.
Two minutes of a lecture, and what’s left of it
…so working memory. Baddeley’s model, and the bit people forget is that it isn’t one store, it’s several. The phonological loop holds speech-based material, and it’s tiny — a couple of seconds’ worth unless you rehearse it. The visuospatial sketchpad does the same job for visual and spatial material. Both of them report to the central executive, which isn’t a store at all, it’s the thing that allocates attention between them. And that’s the point for this module: if the loop is busy holding a sentence, the executive has less to spend on anything else. Capacity is finite and it is shared…
Working memory — Baddeley’s multi-component model
Not a single store: several components with different jobs.
Phonological loop — holds speech-based material; very limited, a couple of seconds without rehearsal.
Visuospatial sketchpad — the equivalent for visual and spatial material.
Central executive — not a store: allocates attention between the components.
Key point for this module: capacity is finite and shared — a busy loop leaves the executive less to spend elsewhere.
Glossary for this lecture
Rehearsal — repeating material to keep it in the loop, as described in the lecture.
The whole lecture is there, not only the parts that were easy to follow.
A worked demonstration written by us from textbook material. No lecture recording and no words from a real lecturer appear on this page.
Common questions
Is this a replacement for DSA support or a note-taker?
No. If you are eligible for Disabled Students’ Allowance, apply — it funds things no app provides. This is useful in the weeks before support is in place, alongside it afterwards, and for anyone without a formal diagnosis.
Can it read the notes out to me?
Yes, the notes can be read aloud in the app. That is a different thing from re-listening to the recording: the material has already been organised into notes and a glossary.
Do I need a diagnosis or any paperwork?
No. There is nothing to prove and nothing to apply for. You upload a recording and get the lecture written up.
My lectures are already recorded by the university. Isn’t that enough?
A recording gives the lecture back at the speed it happened. It can’t be skimmed or searched, so finding the four minutes you missed usually means listening to fifty. A written-up lecture can be read at your own pace.
Can I change the text size or the colours?
Yes — theme and text size are settings in the app, and they stay on the device you set them on.
What can I upload?
An audio recording (mp3, m4a, wav, ogg, opus, flac, aac, iPhone voice memos included) or a text file. Slides, PDFs, images and video do not go in.
Try it on one lecture
Upload a recording and read the whole thing written out — including the parts that went past too quickly.
The first two lectures are free. No card details.