H807-7. Considering disabilities

I'm so pleased this topic is included in our course materials. In all the teacher training courses I've completed up to now, disabilities have never even merited so much as a mention - why is that? I've sometimes wondered over the years how many of our language students are dyslexic (and loads of them seem to have ADD, though I must admit I'm quite sceptical of this particular condition and tend to just think of it as a lack of willingness to concentrate) yet I have absolutely no idea how to recognise dyslexia, and certainly even less idea of any strategies that could help a student to overcome it.

So I've already learned loads just by reading the course notes. In particular, I became aware of these categories of disability:

Personal care: e.g. my cousin who has ALS and a full-time carer
Cognitive: may be able to process text and not images, or vice versa
Unseen: e.g. lupus and anorexia
Dyslexia: manifests itself mainly in reading and spelling difficulties but can also be related to mathematics

It's ironic that I have three people in my family who would qualify as having 'learning disabilities', yet I had never thought of their conditions in these terms before.

I was impressed by the OU's statistics, which show that they attract and support a disproportionately high number of disabled students in comparison with UK higher education as a whole. I'm looking forward to finding out more about how such learners are supported!