Post #15 Learning Disabilities So What Now Has Changed?
Principles 4 and 5 of ‘The Five Basic Principles of Neurodiversity’ say that success on one’s life journey depends on adapting one’s brain to the needs of the surrounding environment… modifying your surrounding environment to fit the needs of your unique brain.[i]
This post is about the ‘Now’ worried over in the journal entry introduced in ‘So What Now is Still the Same’. If success depends on adapting and modifying, in what ways is that possible now? If the 21st century is together taken as the present, what has changed since the early days in the 19th and 20th centuries for learning disabilities? What actual ‘adapting’ and ‘modifying’ has happened in attitudes, rights and educational practice to offer success to LDers?
Positive Changes
In an earlier post I mentioned the treatment of a young girl whose IEP was forgotten during a math test. Later the teacher apologized for his failure to respect her need of extra time. That is refreshing change.
NASA has a hiring program for autistic people, recognizing the value of their ability to focus on analyzing large and complex datasets. They also may see the data differently, leading to new measuring techniques. That is inspiring change.
Learning Disabilities are recognized and viewed more positively
The mother of an autistic artist has progressed to recognizing a need to change her perspective on her son’s abilities: One of the most important things I learned from his teachers was to work with his strengths rather than trying to correct his deficits. [We] were always focused on what Mark couldn’t do – ‘If only he could talk’. Then he’d learn to talk and we’d move on to ‘If only he could read!”[ii]
This change in focus has come not only for parents and teachers but for people with learning differences themselves as Phil Hanley noted, I needed time for my belief in myself to catch up to my ability.[iii]
However limited to individual interactions, an apology, or a change in perception, there is definite progress in how we view the neurodivergent. Accommodations are expected. Teachers and parents today are much more aware of neurodiversity, trauma-informed teaching and strengths-based approaches to learning differences. We are far more supportive.
Learning Disabilities are actively advocated for and legal support is provided
Teachers, parents, and disability advocates are actively pushing governments to improve services. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), 2006, stated that students with disabilities have a right to inclusive education. This human rights proclamation opened the door to challenges against excluding students from regular education.
In a case in 2012, the parents of Jeffrey Moore challenged the expectation that they must bear the costs for private education for him, something that never entered our heads when we sought support for Yasik. The Supreme Court of Canada backed them, ruling that access to meaningful education for students with disabilities is not a “special service” but a necessary accommodation. Schools throughout Canada got busy re-evaluating their policies.[iv] In time, by word of mouth, we too heard we could apply for tax credits for the expenses involved in Yasik’s education.[v]
Learning Differences have the right to inclusion, educational support and funding
This is 2026. In the 1950s the value of inclusion, educational support and funding was already hoped for. If one factor is significantly useful, it is a sympathetic and tolerant reception by the school, … Those of our children who have improved have been extended extraordinary consideration by their teachers.[vi] It took many decades to work out how to show extraordinary consideration as a cultural and societal perspective.
About 30 years ago, to gain acceptance into the teaching program at SFU, I needed some experience in an actual classroom. My options were limited. Someone at my part-time job knew someone who might get me at least a 2-week stint in a school. I took the offer imagining I would be given an opportunity to teach a history class, my major. Of course, no such option was on the table at that school. I was directed to a class for the learning disabled instead. For two weeks I followed neurodivergent teenagers about a room off a hallway from the main classrooms. I was ‘supervised’ by a young male teacher who told me he was only holding down this position until a ‘real’ teaching position opened. In his mind, this was merely his door into ‘real’ teaching. I fulfilled my required experience in ‘teaching’ but I do not remember any ‘real’ teaching happening in all the time we were there. We merely minded these students until the end of each day. I spent the time doing much the same as I did when I worked shifts for the disabled in my part-time job.
Today rather than denying an LD student a seat in a school or relegating them to a classroom away from the heart of a school, educating the neurodivergent in an inclusive environment means being educated in regular classrooms in neighbourhood schools. Whenever possible, inclusion means LDers are educated with their peers with accommodations, IEPs, assistants, therapy and resource teachers as needed.
Apparently among the Canadian provinces, New Brunswick has been the leader with ‘system-wide inclusion’, educating all students in regular classrooms with the appropriate supports needed.
Learning Disability Programs
Yasik was given two psycho-ed assessments during the time he was in elementary school. The first one was provided by his school district while he was in grade three. By the time he was in grade 6 it was evident he needed more than public schools were offering at the time. In fact, the staff at the public school he was attending at the time supported our move to a private school as budget cuts for specialized programs were coming their way. The second psycho-ed, provided by a private company at our expense, was a requirement for acceptance at the primary option at the time, the Orton-Gillingham school, which offered a multisensory approach to educating. What Yasik appreciated the most about this school: “They ask you if you understand right away. They ask you again later and then they ask you at the end”.
Orton Gillingham schools continue to help kids out of a learning disability tar pit. But they are now not the only option available. Over time programs to accommodate learning differences have evolved to reflect different approaches.[vii]
These programs may include access social-emotional learning programs, sensory rooms or calm spaces, trauma-informed teaching, neurodiversity-affirming approaches. Then again sometimes all that is needed is a simple adjustment like extended test time, alternative assignments, modified grading, or quiet test spaces. There are also a wide variety of technology-based supports such as speech-to-text, text-to-speech, audiobooks, predictive typing, accessibility tools, organizational apps, digital textbooks, and a multitude of online offerings of help.[viii]
As mentioned above, as part of the shift to inclusion, some provinces’ education ministries are offering what they term “complexity teams”, to work with the classroom teacher to aid in calming a class or to help with the accommodations needed for individual students. A complexity team might include educational assistants (EAs), learning support teachers, school psychologists, speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists.[ix]
In sum: Mere decades ago there was more segregation, fewer diagnoses, limited accommodations, weaker legal protections, and less awareness. This is not to say, that even today, there are not also programs that promise great success based on anecdotal encouragement rather than evidence-based programming.[x]
Attempts to side-step science aside, today research, advocacy and likely pure and simple human caring have eased the life journeys of many LDers. The work of each person, each community, each society, whether focusing on structured literacy or cognitive retraining, has sought to hold to evidence-based education that meets the needs of many more learning differences.[xi]
Today the neurodiverse community has much stronger legal rights, inclusive education philosophy, better identification of learning differences, assistive technology, greater social awareness.
Negative changes
The perverseness of it all. While we applaud progress for LDers, too much of a good thing threatens. Alongside these gains, there are emerging tensions and contradictions.
Some researchers are now expressing concerns that we have become too inclusive. The parameters of the definition are being questioned. Dame Uta Frith, who pioneered much of the research that underpins autism, warned that … the drive for ‘inclusivity’ had caused the concept of the autism spectrum to become so ‘stretched’ that it is now ‘meaningless’… and a diagnosis has become somewhat desirable’ [making it no] longer useful as a medical diagnosis. Cool eh.[xii]
Too much of a good thing is also apparently threatened.
More inclusion is not always translating into more actual support? While the numbers of learning different individuals expand, inclusion in Canada serves [l]ess than half of students with intellectual disabilities, often remaining dependent on funding and the need for more staff, particularly when faced with multiple and complex needs as diagnoses are provided faster than supports.
In fact!, some adult LDers, perhaps with some sugar coating over their memories, believe that even without the supports 20 to 30 years ago, getting educated was easier because the structure and expectations were different. As they see it, [s]tudents are expected to master skills like reading and writing earlier in elementary school. More homework, projects, and assessments are common with constant switching between subjects and between analog and digital formats. Grade level work is expected in an inclusive classroom, with accommodations rather than reduced expectations. Multitasking, organization and time management are necessary. Autistic students are confronted with social situations, even as innocuous as group work, and distracting environments burning up valuable energy.
More adapting and modifying has happily led to changes in attitudes, rights, and educational practice. In many cases, it also means higher expectations, greater complexity, and new kinds of demands.
Another essential paradox.
Footnotes
[i] Armstrong, Thomas, PhD The Power of Diversity: unleashing the advantages of your neurodivergent brain, 2nd ed. balance, 2025, 8-15
[ii] Silberman, Steve Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity Avery, 2016, 477
[iii] Hanley, Phil. Spellbound: my life as a dyslexic wordsmith Henry Holt and Company, 2025, 223
[iv] Silberman, Steve Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity Avery, 2016, 266-271, 296
[v] Silberman, Steve Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity Avery, 2016, 266-271, 296
[vi] Silberman, Steve Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity Avery, 2016, 218
[vii] Berg, Jessica “My teen couldn’t read for years: dyslexia diagnosis changed everything” Jan 2, 2026 Change: https://www./businessinsider.com
[viii] Eaton, Howard. “Looking Into Our Past For A Better Future: Learning Disability Intervention Then and Now”
Wright, Margaret J. and Fiona Mullan Dyslexia and the Phono-Grafix reading programme Support for Learning 21(2):77 – 84 DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9604.2006.00408.x May 2006 QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227684212_Dyslexia_and_the_Phono-Grafix_reading_programme
[ix] French, Janet. CBC News “Alberta looks to Saskatchewan’s model for tackling classroom complexity in schools. Saskatchewan initiatives a good start but need more funding, some leaders say” Feb 23, 2026
[x] Hupp, Stephen and Jeremy Kewell Great Myths of Child Development (Great Myths of Psychology) Myth #21, Myth #22, Myth #21
Hardach, Sophie “Writing in English can be a challenge – even if it’s your mother tongue” https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230302-can-dyslexia-change-in-other-languages March 9, 2023
Shaywitz, Sally, M.D. and Jonathan Shaywitz, M.D. Overcoming Dyslexia, 2nd ed. Alfred A Knopf, 2020, 39, 119, 120
Davis, Ronald D. with Eldon M. Braun The Gift of Dyslexia: why some of the smartest people can’t read … and how they can learn Tarcher, 2010
Blyth Hall, Sue Fish Don’t Climb Trees: a whole new look at dyslexia: understanding and overcoming the challenges-enjoying the gift. FriesenPress, 2020
Stainsby, Mia “The Davis Method claims a high rate of success in teaching dyslexics to read”. Southam Newspapers; Vancouver Sun January 20001 https://www.dyslexia.com/articles/living_with_dyslexia.htmlLiving with Dyslexia
Rappaport, Lisa, PhD & Jody Lyons, Med Parenting Dyslexia: a comprehensive guide to helping kids combat shame, build confidence, and achieve their true potential balance, 2025, 6
[xi] Eaton, Howard. “Looking Into Our Past For A Better Future: Learning Disability Intervention Then and Now”
Wright, Margaret J. and Fiona Mullan Dyslexia and the Phono-Grafix reading programme Support for Learning 21(2):77 – 84 DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9604.2006.00408.x May 2006 QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227684212_Dyslexia_and_the_Phono-Grafix_reading_programme
[xii] Tozer, James “Autism has become ‘glamorised’ and diagnosis ‘desirable’, expert warns” Daily Mail https://www.msn.com/en-za/news/other/autism-has-become-glamorised-and-diagnosis-desirable-expert-warns/ar-AA1XM6pr
Shrier, Abigail Bad Therapy: why the kids aren’t growing up Sentinel, 2024,18, 19
Omary, Adam “The Myth of the Autism Epidemic” https://humanprogress.org/the-myth-of-the-autism-epidemic/April 1, 2026
Hupp, Stephen and Jeremy Kewell Great Myths of Child Development (Great Myths of Psychology) Myth #21, Myth #22, Myth #21
Hardach, Sophie “Writing in English can be a challenge – even if it’s your mother tongue” https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230302-can-dyslexia-change-in-other-languages March 9, 2023
Shaywitz, Sally, M.D. and Jonathan Shaywitz, M.D. Overcoming Dyslexia, 2nd ed. Alfred A Knopf, 2020, 39, 119, 120
Davis, Ronald D. with Eldon M. Braun The Gift of Dyslexia: why some of the smartest people can’t read … and how they can learn Tarcher, 2010
Blyth Hall, Sue Fish Don’t Climb Trees: a whole new look at dyslexia: understanding and overcoming the challenges-enjoying the gift. FriesenPress, 2020
Stainsby, Mia “The Davis Method claims a high rate of success in teaching dyslexics to read”. Southam Newspapers; Vancouver Sun January 20001 https://www.dyslexia.com/articles/living_with_dyslexia.htmlLiving with Dyslexia
Rappaport, Lisa, PhD & Jody Lyons, Med Parenting Dyslexia: a comprehensive guide to helping kids combat shame, build confidence, and achieve their true potential balance, 2025, 6
