There are many useful definitions and descriptions of “learning disability”. In the field of literacy, however, the simplest and most useful way to explain it is to say that a person with a learning disability is a normal individual with an information processing disability. However, one must first understand and accept that a learning disability is not a weakness or due to a lack of skills training. It is not caused by a lack of motivation, an inappropriate curriculum or ineffective teachers. It is a real, diagnosable disability. As such, people with learning disabilities have the right to appropriate accommodation (changes in learning and teaching strategies). This right is assured within the Canadian Federal Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Learning disabilities can affect the way in which a learner reads, comprehends, writes, spells, speaks, calculates, makes informal choices or stores and retrieves information.
While there are numerous types or subsets of learning disabilities, the ones that affect literacy can be organized into three main clusters.
You may have a learner who says they have been told they have dyslexia. Dyslexia is a medical term to describe an individual’s inability to access and successfully decode written language. One could say dyslexia is a “subtype” of the more generic term ‘learning disability’.
Note: In Britain and Western Europe Dyslexia is used as the generic term for what we call Learning Disabilities and Learning Disabilities is the term they use for developmental or intellectual disabilities.