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#learningdisabilities

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@jonny @ShiitakeToast

You can say what you like of course, but
this just isn't the case.

I'm a person with learning disabilities, and in an academic environment I can be weeks or months behind when a concept doesn't "click" or I find it difficult to apply.

I've worked with LLMs to explain things to me in new/novel ways tested my understanding, etc. and that's made me more able to understand material more quickly.

While learning is in part the journey of getting to knowledge, when there are assistive tools that can help people with disabilities, denying them access to them, or saying that it's not real etc is ableism just in the same way that when I was in school, I encountered teachers and students who said that if I couldn't spell a word, I didn't understand what it meant, therefore spell check meant I couldn't read.

University of Kentucky: Hatcher developing tools to support people with Dyscalculia. “Dyscalculia is not a well-known disability, which means that people who experience it have limited help. Jay Hatcher aims to change that. Dyscalculia affects a person’s ability to work with numbers and do math. Hatcher, a software engineer for HDI, is developing an app called Ucalculia, which aims to […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/01/18/university-of-kentucky-hatcher-developing-tools-to-support-people-with-dyscalculia/

ResearchBuzz: Firehose | Individual posts from ResearchBuzz · University of Kentucky: Hatcher developing tools to support people with Dyscalculia | ResearchBuzz: Firehose
More from ResearchBuzz: Firehose

With all the talk about social care in #ukpolitics at the moment there's an assumption that it only affects the elderly.

There's a huge number of people in social care who are not elderly and I seriously hope they are being considered by the government and it's review.

This includes people with severe and profound learning disabilities, as well as people with severe mental health issues needing care.

Our family experiences of moving from hospital care to care in the case of mental illness has been extremely mixed.

The common factor in all of this seems to be that Social Care is seen as a profit centre by a huge number of businesses - and I'm unconvinced that many of them have the interests of the clients at heart.

The Fort Lowestoft in the UK is a gaming-based charity that supports people with learning disabilities. They run a gaming hub and social space for their community and are a really great charity. The Fort is raising money to purchase their space from their landlord and could use some help! Boosts are greatly appreciated to help them reach this goal. gofundme.com/f/help-lowestoft- #gaming #charity #GoFundMe #LearningDisabilities #disability #fundraising

😶 FFS. The MAGA are busy bees.

The of the r-word.

Disability advocates spent a decade campaigning against the . Now it’s coming back.

Around 15 years ago, a new campaign took off across the young social media ecosystem.

People with and intellectual were asking everyone else to stop using the to describe them or even to make jokes. No more, “Bro, that movie’s so dumb, it’s [r-word]…”

vox.com/culture/376401/r-word-

Vox · The resurgence of the r-wordBy Constance Grady

I have some pretty out-there ideas around assistive technology and learning disabilities.

For example, I believe all children should be taught phonics. This is the standard in most countries, but not in the US.

I believe that for children who have fine motor skill deficit, keyboards are great, but so are gliding pens, such as gel, or fountain pens.

I believe that for learning language, Esperanto can be an assistive technology, both for a foreign language, and even for someone who is struggling with English.

I think slide rules should make a return, and would ideally have a larger role than graphing calculators (are these still around?)

I think that privacy-respecting, FLOSS, and locally hosted AI can play a huge role in education, providing a host of services from explanations, to quizzing, to helping provide outlines and examples.