It appeared that “being different” influenced the expectations of those people who could have had a beneficial impact on the participants’ learning. As one participant said “people don’t want to put themselves in my shoes or think about the reality of living with a disability” (BC12). A general lack of understanding about the consequences of a physical disability and unchallenged myths about the capabilities of people with disabilities appeared to permeate the participant’s accounts of their learning experiences. These experiences suggest that designers and instructors of literacy programs involving people with disability need to engage in disability awareness training initiatives. Such initiatives need to provide the opportunity for instructors to ask questions and increase their comfort level by actively involving learners with disabilities.

· Negative Experience of School

Twenty (77%) participants spoke at length about their negative experiences at elementary and high school. These experiences focused primarily on their perception that they did not fit into the existing education system:

“ The system caters for groups of 30-40 people, if you need help one-to-one or you don’t fit in, you have no chance of learning anything.” (BC1)

The participants’ perceived that rather than address the accommodations they needed to support their learning , the education system, particularly the teachers, “just wanted to push me through the system” (BC2). As a result, several of the participants found themselves in upper Grades with minimum ability to read and write, with “no F’s, A’s or B’s, nothing on my school record but P’s” (BC1). These participant comments reflect some of the problems:

“ After trying Grade 11 three times and failing, they got tired of me so they put me in Grade 12 – I managed until exam time but then panicked – couldn’t read the instructions.” (NB2)

“ Did Grade 1 twice, didn’t pass Grade 2 but moved on to Grade 3 and 4 anyway.” (NB6)

“ I resubmitted some assignments (cheated), but the teachers didn’t care. Got A’s but didn’t know anything. You think you’re getting away with it, but your screwing yourself and don’t realize it until later.” (NB3)

Participants felt that “school made it hard to learn” (SK1), “the teachers didn’t know how to help,” “felt under pressure to produce, needed more time, slower pace, large print books” (BC10) and “had to repeat Grades with younger kids who would make fun of me” (NB6). Some participants were offered assistance in the form of scribes and tape recording as an alternative to writing English exams, but these well-intentioned accommodations inserted into the regular system added another layer of complications and meant that the participants did not actually learn the basics of reading and writing.