BUFFALO, N.Y. — When it comes to literacy rates among adults, New York has the second-lowest rate in the U.S. According to World Population Review, about 22% of adults lack basic prose literacy.

“A lot of the folks we work with are at a first-second grade level,” said Amy Mazur, director of operations for Literacy Buffalo Niagara.

For those trying to gain this skill as adults, it’s hard.

“Yeah, there's a lot of emotional baggage," said Mazur. "Think of how hard it was to learn [a] foreign language when we were in middle school and high school. Adults learn at a much slower rate. They have to be more intentional, more aware of the work that they're doing and the practice they're putting in.”

Mazur and Literacy Buffalo Niagara see about 140,000 adults at the lowest level of literacy, in their counties alone.

“A lot of the folks that we work with struggled with things like their families didn't read well, so they were struggling to support them," Mazur explained. "A lot of folks have learning disabilities, both diagnosed and undiagnosed.”

But people adapt. You might not realize someone you know can’t read or write well because they use speech-to-text or other translation devices. They just don’t catch errors as well.

“When we say low literacy, it's people who struggle to read more than one sentence, directions that have more than one step in it,” said Mazur.

Literacy Buffalo Niagara teams learners with instructors one-on-one. Over the course of a year, they serve around 200 students.

“They'll typically see an improvement of a level about every year," said Mazur. "We do sometimes have people who are like stay-at-home moms who are only practicing English with their tutor a couple hours a week. Their progress seems to be a little bit more a little bit more limited.”

Since the pandemic, their volunteer numbers also took a hit, making finding those instructors even harder for a constant demand.

“I've never seen a decline [in clients] in my time here of almost 18 years,” said Mazur.

It’s seeing progress that makes it all worth it.

“Being able to go to a restaurant and picking out what you want from a menu, and not just ordering generic food because you don't know what they have, those things are quality of life,” she added.

Mazur hopes changes to how reading is taught will lessen the number of adults who will need help. She expects though, whether it be immigrants or native English speakers, someone will always help, and they’ll be there to serve.

“At the end of the day, we're here to make people's lives easier,” Mazur said.

She says another aspect that makes learning to read and write as an adult harder is prior trauma.

Memories of being made fun of in school or being told they’re not trying hard enough flood back during this process.

That’s why some students will stop lessons or take extended breaks until they realize this will be a different environment.