“Dislecksia: The Movie,” directed by Harvey Hubbell V, is an informative, entertaining survey about what dyslexia is and how to treat it. A central theme is that the condition, estimated to affect up to 35 million Americans, is not a learning disability, but a learning difference.

The distinction is important to advocates: Dyslexic students are not mentally impaired or even necessarily slow learners; they are wired in a way that makes words hard to decipher and retain, partly because the letters may appear jumbled. Dyslexia is a text-based circumstance: as the film’s title suggests, one technique dyslexics have used to teach themselves is to spell words phonetically. These days, students with the condition can be taught effectively through audio and video means.

The film’s primary mission is to destigmatize dyslexia, and it achieves that admirably, presenting technical material with a light touch and compassion. Mr. Hubbell, himself dyslexic, wryly recounts growing up in the 1960s and 1970s frustrated by a condition few could identify, let alone treat. The lawyer David Boies, the television writer Stephen J. Cannell and the actor Billy Bob Thornton are among those who discuss how dealing with the condition led to their personal successes. (Dyslexics, it would seem, can do well in professions that rely on oral and memory skills.) Mr. Hubbell also interviews researchers who are breaking ground in the science of reading, educators applying the new methods and students who have benefited. As this upbeat film concludes, dyslexics untie!