She knows her letter sounds but gets confused with vowel sounds and the y sound. She attempts to sound out unfamiliar words but is completely off when trying. Meaning if the word is 'picnic' she may start sounding it out as if it starts with the letter r. Most of the time she's nowhere near close to sounding it out successfully. She frequently skips lines and words. Usually the little words like 'of, the, at, this' etc.... She has a fairly good recollection of sight words, but generally only the longer words. Little ones like where, there, that, what, then, when, he, she, she confuses. She may know one word on one page, and then not recognize that word on the next page. She tries to follow along with her finger but her finger doesn't seem to stay with where she's reading. She's never mentioned colors when reading, but she has told me that the words move around or if I ask her why she skipped a word she'll tell me she didn't see it. She does better when there are fewer words on a page however, she'll still skip words. And she'll also fill in words that are somewhat similar.
Most of her reading errors sound like she has problems with tracking and convergence and possibly with scotopic sensitivity. I would make getting her visual processing evaluated a high priority. It seems from her description of what she sees and your description of what she does when she tries to read that she has an input or processing problem with her visual system. It would be hard to say at this point whether her problems sounding out are related to phonological processing or to just not seeing the letters that are actually there and seeing them in the right order.
While reading she doesn't confuse b and d or p and q. But she will write them backwards along with some other letters. While spelling she'll often have the right letters but in the wrong order. For instance, where might be spelled wheer or best would be bets. She reverses numbers more frequently than letters and will even transpose a number like 42 and write it as 24 instead.
The writing issues and reversals are likely output problems, not input problems, and probably need to be assessed separately from the input issues. It is entirely possible to have great reading skills and an intact, well-coordinated visual system and still have the kinds of written output problems that you describe. (It's why I love my computer: I hit the "p" key, and a "p" comes out on the page - every time. Pencils and pens are far less reliable for me in this respect.)
