I recently acquired a retail job. As someone with dyscalculia, I was talking to a friend and trying to describe my difficulty counting change when doing cash transactions at the register. I told her that my coworkers are kind enough to step in and help me but that I sometimes feel embarrassed about not being able to do it myself. Her reply was, “Why don’t you just learn? Being able to work with change is a useful skill!” This statement, directed toward someone with dyscalculia is equivalent to looking at a person who is paralyzed and saying, “Why don’t you just learn? Mobility is a useful skill!”
I think people tend to confuse learning disabilities with something that an individual is “just not that skilled at / not their cup of tea etc...” and thus, as something that can be improved upon through enough practice and study. This is not always the case. There may be aspects of the disability that cannot be resolved or learned through enough study or practice. There can be real limitations. For me, personally, I know there are things that my disability renders me incapable of doing.
A learning disability can be just as cognitively debilitating as a physical disability is physically debilitating. And in both cases, you can find methods that help to mitigate issues and find techniques to work around struggles.
Just because you can’t “see” a learning disability doesn’t mean that there is not a real impairment or challenge present.
