Learning Disabilities include a variety of disorders that affect the:

• Acquisition (Information getting into the brain and into memory)
• Retention (keeping information in your memory)
• Understanding (understanding information you hear or see or read)
• Organization (finding the information you need when you need it)
• Use of verbal and/or non-verbal information

Impact of Learning Disabilities

Learning disabilities range in severity and invariably interfere with the acquisition and use of one or more of the following important skills:

• oral language (e.g., listening, speaking, understanding)
• reading (e.g., decoding, comprehension)
  
• written language (e.g., spelling, written expression)
• mathematics (e.g., computation, problem solving)
• may also cause difficulties with organizational skills, social perception and social interaction

Other Facts

• due to genetic, other congenital and/or acquired neuro-biological factors impairments are generally life-long frequently co-exist with other conditions, including attentional, behavioural and emotional disorders

Learning Disabilities are NOT caused by:

• cultural or language differences
• poor teachers
• socio-economic status
• lack of motivation/laziness

1) Learning disabilities result from impairments psychological processes related to learning:

• phonological processing (how sounds make words)
• memory and attention in one or more go together to processing speed (how fast you can do visual tasks)
• language processing (how well you can understand what you hear and say what you want to say)
• perceptual-motor processing (eye-hand coordination)
• visual-spatial processing (how things are organized visually)
• executive functions; (planning, monitoring and metacognitive abilities)

2) Learning disabilities are found in individuals with otherwise average (or above average) abilities essential for thinking and reasoning.

3) Learning disabilities are "specific" not global impairments

4) Learning disabilities are very different from intellectual disabilities

Accommodations and Strategies

For success, persons with learning disabilities require specialized interventions in home, school, community and workplace settings, appropriate to their individual strengths and needs, including:

• specialized tutoring the development of compensatory strategies (study skills, adaptive technology)
• the development of self-advocacy skills
• academic accommodations
• workplace accommodations

This definition is supported by a background document entitled Operationalizing the New Definition of Learning Disabilities for Utilization within Ontario's Educational System, LDAO, 2001.