It refers to an individual having impairment in listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning, and/or mathematical skills.
Learning disability was considered a part of the RPWD Act (Rights of Persons with Disabilities) only in 2016 when it was revised.
Primarily there are three components to learning disability:
Dyslexia (reading)
Dysgraphia (writing)
Dyscalculia (arithmetic)
The major signs that indicate a person is at risk for learning disability are:
Poor attention span in the classroom
Difficulty in recalling information
Poor grades/performance in examination
Slowness in reading or writing
Difficulty in reading and understanding information
Inappropriate use of capital and small letters
Inappropriate use of punctuation marks
Illegible handwriting
Letter reversals
Number reversals
Poor arithmetic skills
Speech problem
Difficulty in problem-solving and reasoning
Difficulty in copying information from the board (visual-motor integration difficulty)
Poor/ inappropriate response to questions (needs repetitions and prompts to elicit a response)
If a child is screened positive for a learning disability, he/she undergoes a detailed evaluation of various skills and will be diagnosed by a clinical psychologist. Once diagnosed, he/she will be put up for therapy which will have a hierarchy of processes to ultimately integrate the child into normal classrooms.
Individuals with LD are eligible for certain accommodations and modifications in their examinations such as a reader, writer, additional time, overlooking spelling errors, calculator for mathematics, or attempting a lower grade-level mathematics paper, and exemption from a second language (Karande et al., 2011; Maharashtra Dyslexia Association, n.d.) as well as quotas in higher education placements (Ministry of Law and Justice, 2016).
