This doctoral dissertation, conducted as a phenomenological study, investigated what students labeled with learning disabilities (LD; also called learning differences) view as barriers to their access of higher education and what they see as their accommodation needs for full participation in education. Eleven college students labeled with LD engaged in long interviews which provided the primary data. Findings, interpreted through emerging theories in the new field of disability studies, indicated barriers to education were seen as socially imposed rather than emanating from individual pathology. Informants indicated they were blocked from moving effectively through higher education by: (a) being misunderstood and misrepresented by their institutions, (b) feeling reluctant to use accommodations for fear of invoking stigma, (c) devaluing their work accomplished with accommodations, (d) needing to work significantly longer hours on homework than their non-labeled counterparts, (e) feeling their extraordinary workload was unrecognized by faculty, (f) finding their hard work did not produce a product commensurate with their efforts (leading them to believe faculty doubted their work effort) and, (g) not being consulted by clinicians in determining their accommodation needs. Strategies used by some of these informants to overcome these barriers included: (a) rejecting the disability label, (b) establishing interpersonal relationships with their professors in order for professors to see past the stereotype of LD and recognize the capacity of the individual within, (c) having the assistance of an LD Specialist who advocated for informants with faculty and bureaucracies, and (d) establishing empowerment communities with others labeled with LD. Data strongly points to the need for faculty diversity training on LD issues to be implemented by universities. This study also offers an insider's view of how findings in medical research map to the context of everyday life, classroom learning, and social interaction. Informants describe how difficulties with visual, phonemic, semantic, memory, and kinesthetic functioning appear and disappear in the context of social situations.

This study recommends colleges provide for social and political empowerment of those labeled with LD by recognition of an autonomous LD community on campuses similar to minority student groups-emphasis on political not therapeutic groups.