The performance of children and young adults with Down syndrome (DS) on reading subskills and nonword reading was investigated. The performance of the participants with DS (N = 42) was compared to that of typically developing (N = 36) peers matched on fluid intelligence abilities. The study accounted for the different depths in orthography presented by the two languages. The independent samples t-test, Mann-Whitney U-test, ANCOVA and correlation analysis were used to analyse the data. This study identified that the participants with DS had several strengths, such as nonword reading, visual discrimination (VD) and phonological awareness. Verbal short-term memory, visual perceptual processing skills other than VD and rhyming skills were identified as weaker in DS compared with the control group. Results call for educators to expose readers with DS to a phonological approach to reading while accommodating difficulties in VSTM.