Learning Disabilities & Dyslexia

Learning disabilities are the most commonly denied accommodation request in higher education, and they are denied for a reason that is legally wrong.

If your college has refused, delayed, or failed to deliver an accommodation for a learning disability or dyslexia, here is how I handle disability accommodation disputes under Section 504 and the ADA.

Schools look at your grades. A student with dyslexia who has worked twice as hard for the same result is told the condition cannot be substantially limiting, because look at the transcript. That is the wrong comparison, and the statute says so.

The comparison the law actually requires

The question is whether an impairment substantially limits a major life activity as compared to most people in the general population. Reading, concentrating, thinking, writing and learning are all major life activities named in the statute.

So the comparison is not you against your classmates, and it is not you against your own potential. It is how you read compared with most people. A student who decodes text at the tenth percentile is substantially limited in reading whether or not she has an A average — and the effort required to produce that average is itself evidence, not a rebuttal.

The statute is explicit that the beneficial effects of mitigating measures are disregarded. Compensating strategies, extra hours, tutoring, assistive software and sheer determination are mitigating measures. You are assessed as you would be without them.

What accommodations look like

Examinations: extended time, most commonly time and a half or double time depending on the measured processing or reading rate; a reduced-distraction setting; a reader or text-to-speech; a scribe or speech-to-text; a paper rather than screen format; permission to mark up the question paper.

Coursework: lecture recording; note-taking support; accessible electronic texts in advance; extended deadlines on written work where writing is the affected activity; alternative formats for reading-heavy assignments.

Spelling and mechanics: spellcheck permitted on handwritten and closed-book examinations, and marking that does not penalise spelling where spelling is not what is being assessed.

Course substitutions, most often for a foreign language requirement, where the disability directly affects the skill the requirement measures and the requirement is not essential to the degree.

Standardised tests are a separate fight

Accommodations at your university do not transfer automatically to the LSAT, MCAT, GRE, USMLE, NCLEX, bar examination or CPA examination. Each testing body runs its own process, on its own timeline, with its own documentation demands — and those deadlines fall months before the test.

The single most valuable thing you can do is establish a documented history of accommodation now, because every one of those bodies weighs prior use heavily. A student requesting extended time for the first time at the bar examination is in a far weaker position than one who has had it since first year.

What schools get wrong

“Your grades are fine.” Achievement is not the statutory test, and outcome-based denials misapply the comparison the law prescribes.

“We need testing from the last three years.” Learning disabilities are lifelong and do not remit. A blanket recency rule for a permanent condition imposes a burden that costs students thousands of pounds in re-testing and that the law does not require; ask, in writing, what the school believes may have changed.

“You were never accommodated in school, so this is new.” Many students are diagnosed late, particularly those who compensated well early or whose schools never assessed them. A late diagnosis is a diagnosis.

“Extended time would fundamentally alter the assessment.” Only where speed is genuinely what the assessment measures, which is rarer than it is claimed. That has to be shown for the specific assessment, not asserted about examinations in general.

Approving it and not delivering it. An approved accommodation that never reached the instructor, the testing centre or the clinical site is an institutional failure — and a term completed without it did not measure you fairly.

The four rules that decide coverage

The Office for Civil Rights repeats the same boxed statement of how the coverage question is decided in every condition fact sheet it publishes. It comes from the statute, not from the fact sheets, so it applies to every condition equally — including this one. It is short, it is favourable to students, and almost nobody reads it:

The question should not demand extensive analysis. Whether an impairment substantially limits a major life activity is not meant to be a fight.
“Substantially limits” is construed broadly, in favour of expansive coverage, to the maximum extent the statutory language permits.
An impairment need not prevent or severely restrict anything. It is enough that it substantially limits the activity as compared to most people in the general population. And an impairment that is episodic or in remission is a disability if it would substantially limit a major life activity when active.
Medication is disregarded. The beneficial effects of mitigating measures — medication above all — must be left out of the assessment. You are evaluated as you would be untreated.

OCR adds one more line to every sheet that is worth committing to memory: a school may always accept that a student has a disability without any documentation or medical tests. Documentation may be requested. It is not a precondition the law imposes.

And this, which answers the most common self-defeating assumption students make: a student may need modifications even if they are not substantially limited in the major life activity of learning. Good grades do not end the inquiry.

Accommodations for other conditions

The legal test is the same whatever the diagnosis — what matters is the functional limitation and the barrier it creates. These pages cover other conditions:

The law that governs a college accommodation request

Two statutes do the work. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. § 794, reaches every school that takes federal money — which is very nearly all of them. The ADA covers the rest: Title II for public colleges and universities, Title III for private ones as places of public accommodation. In the Eleventh Circuit, which governs Florida, claims under the two are analysed under the same standards.

The regulation that actually decides most disputes is 34 C.F.R. § 104.44, and it is worth knowing what it says on both sides of the line.

What it requires. A college must modify academic requirements where necessary so they do not discriminate — and the regulation names examples: changes in the length of time permitted to complete a degree, substitution of specific courses, and adaptation of how a course is conducted. It requires modified examination formats so that results measure achievement rather than the disability, unless the disability is what the test is measuring. And it requires auxiliary aids — taped texts, interpreters, library readers, adapted classroom equipment.

What it expressly does not require. The same regulation says a college need not provide attendants, individually prescribed devices, readers for personal use or study, or other devices or services of a personal nature. A student who asks for a personal aide or a personal reader is asking for something § 104.44 does not oblige the school to supply, and it is better to know that at the outset. The regulation also provides that academic requirements the school can demonstrate are essential to the instruction, or to a directly related licensing requirement, are not discriminatory.

“Otherwise qualified” — and where Florida students lose

Protection runs only to a student who is “otherwise qualified.” Under Southeastern Community College v. Davis, 442 U.S. 397 (1979), that means able to meet the programme’s requirements in spite of the disability, and the statute does not require substantial modifications to the programme itself. The Eleventh Circuit put it plainly in Goldberg v. Florida International University, 838 F. App’x 487 (11th Cir. 2020): a qualified student is one who can meet the programme’s academic standards with or without accommodations.

The recent Florida cases show where that bites. In Nehme v. Florida International University Board of Trustees, 121 F.4th 1379 (11th Cir. 2024), a medical student who failed at least eight courses — five of them after being placed on academic probation — was held not to be a qualified individual, and it counted against him that he conceded he had received proper accommodations for four of the failed exams. In J.A.M. v. Nova Southeastern University, 646 F. App’x 921 (11th Cir. 2016), repeated extended leaves of absence, exam rescheduling and excusal of misconduct were held to be accommodations that would fundamentally alter an osteopathic medicine programme.

The practical lesson runs the other way, though, and it is the reason timing matters more than almost anything else: accommodations are forward-looking. A request made after a run of failures is fighting the record those failures created. The same request made before them is a different case entirely.

The school has to actually think about it — the strongest student-side rule

Deference to academic judgment is real. Courts will not override a genuinely academic decision unless it is “such a substantial departure from accepted academic norms as to demonstrate that the person or committee responsible did not actually exercise professional judgment” — Regents of University of Michigan v. Ewing, 474 U.S. 214, 225 (1985) — and courts in Florida give the same respect to a school’s judgment about the qualifications its programme requires. But deference is earned, not assumed, and that is where cases are won.

Under Wynne v. Tufts University School of Medicine, 932 F.2d 19 (1st Cir. 1991) (en banc) — applied in Florida in Forbes v. St. Thomas University, 768 F. Supp. 2d 1222 (S.D. Fla. 2010), aff’d, 456 F. App’x 809 (11th Cir. 2012) — a school has “a real obligation” to “seek suitable means of reasonably accommodating” a student with a disability, and has to put in a factual record showing that its officials “considered alternative means, their feasibility, cost and effect on the academic program” before concluding that no reasonable accommodation was available. A conclusory assertion, with no evidence of deliberate consideration, is not enough. So the question to ask of any denial is not only “was this decision right?” but “is there any record that anyone actually weighed the alternatives?” Often there is not.

Two further points help. Whether an accommodation would impose an undue burden or fundamentally alter a programme is generally a question of fact — Redding v. Nova Southeastern University, 165 F. Supp. 3d 1274 (S.D. Fla. 2016) — which means it is not something a school can simply assert its way past. And to establish fundamental alteration a school has to identify the essential requirement, show that modifying it goes to the core of the programme, and show it considered whether any lesser alternative existed.

The interactive process, and a warning about how students lose it

Section 504 and the ADA do not use the phrase “interactive process” for college students the way employment law does, and the Eleventh Circuit has not held in a published decision that failing to engage in one is independently actionable — that remains unsettled. What Florida courts do recognise, from Forbes, is that the process is genuinely two-sided: the student carries the initial burden to identify the disability and make the case for specific accommodations, after which the school must consider the request and make a reasoned decision.

Here is the warning. In Amy v. Florida International University Board of Trustees, 2024 WL 5323717 (S.D. Fla. Nov. 20, 2024), the court found that the student broke down the interactive process by insisting on one particular accommodation and resisting any alternative. Where a school does not obstruct the process and makes reasonable efforts to communicate and to accommodate on the information it has, liability does not follow. Refusing every alternative on offer is a way to lose a case that could have been won — ask for what you need, but engage with what is proposed, and put the reasons in writing.

Technical standards

Published technical standards get real deference. Following Southeastern Community College v. Davis, the Eleventh Circuit treats a school’s academic standards as entitled to deference as the statement of the qualifications its programme requires: Wood v. President & Trustees of Spring Hill College, 978 F.2d 1214, 1222–23 (11th Cir. 1992); see also Redding v. Nova Southeastern University, 165 F. Supp. 3d 1274, 1285 (S.D. Fla. 2016). They are not untouchable. The Section 504 regulation shields only the academic requirements a school can demonstrate are essential to the instruction or to a directly related licensing requirement, 34 C.F.R. § 104.44(a), so the showing is the school’s to make. And under Wynne, the school has to show that the people responsible actually considered the alternatives — their feasibility, cost and effect on the programme — rather than simply pointing to the standard. Courts will not second-guess curriculum or clinical content on a thin record, but a standard that appears nowhere until the moment it is used to exclude a student is a different matter from one published and applied consistently for years.

Retaliation

Asking for accommodations is protected activity, and so is complaining about how a request was handled. A retaliation claim requires protected activity, the school’s knowledge of it, an adverse action, and a causal link — with but-for causation, and the familiar burden-shifting that follows. Retaliation claims sometimes survive where the underlying accommodation claim does not, because they turn on what the school did after the request rather than on whether the student was qualified.

Where to complain, and what it is worth

There are two routes and they are not alternatives you have to choose between carefully — a student may do both.

The Office for Civil Rights. A complaint to the U.S. Department of Education’s OCR must be filed within 180 days of the discriminatory act. It costs nothing and needs no lawyer, though what you put in it matters.

Court. A postsecondary student does not have to exhaust administrative remedies before suing under Section 504 or the ADA. Filing with OCR is not a prerequisite.

On remedies, be realistic. Injunctive relief — reinstatement, the accommodation itself, correction of a record — and attorney’s fees do not require proof of intentional discrimination. Money damages do, generally shown through deliberate indifference: that the school knew of a substantial risk of discrimination and failed to act.

And one recent development that changes what these cases are worth. In Cummings v. Premier Rehab Keller, 596 U.S. 212 (2022), the Supreme Court held that emotional distress damages are not recoverable under Section 504, because it was enacted under the Spending Clause and funding recipients never consented to that exposure. The Eleventh Circuit extended that to ADA Title II in A.W. v. Coweta County School District, 110 F.4th 1309 (11th Cir. 2024). Earlier Eleventh Circuit authority allowing emotional distress damages, Sheely v. MRI Radiology Network, 505 F.3d 1173 (11th Cir. 2007), no longer holds. For most students this means the value of a case lies in getting the accommodation, the place, or the record put right — not in a damages award for the distress of the fight.

This page describes how these rules work in general. It is not legal advice about your situation, and no outcome can be promised in any individual case.

College is not high school, and the difference catches almost everyone

If you had an IEP or a 504 plan at school, the rules you are now under are not the rules you grew up with. The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights sets out the shift plainly, and it comes down to four changes.

Nobody is looking for you. A college has no obligation to identify students with disabilities. In school, the district had a duty to find, evaluate and serve you. At college that duty does not exist. Section 504 actually goes further and prohibits a college from asking whether an applicant has a disability before admission — so the institution is not permitted to spot you on the way in, and it will not come looking afterwards.

The request is yours to make, and timing is part of it. OCR is explicit: at the postsecondary level it is the student’s responsibility to make the condition known and to request academic adjustments, and to do it in a timely manner. You may disclose to the 504 Coordinator, to a dean, to a faculty advisor, or to each professor individually. Nothing happens until you do.

Accommodations do not backdate. This follows from the point above and it is where most students lose. An accommodation granted in November does not repair a September exam. Where a student asks only after a run of poor grades, the school is answering a different question — not “what does this student need?” but “should we undo a record?” The same request made earlier is a far stronger case.

What the college owes you is different too. There is no IEP and no individualised education programme. What Section 504 requires at this level is academic adjustments, modified examination formats and auxiliary aids — and the standard is that you meet the academic and technical standards requisite for admission to or participation in the programme. The college does owe you one thing on its own initiative: it must inform students of the availability of auxiliary aids, services and academic adjustments, and name the person who coordinates its Section 504 compliance.

One protection is broader than people realise. Section 504 covers not only a current impairment but a record of one and being regarded as having one. A student with a history of mental or emotional illness, heart disease or cancer — or one who was misclassified — is protected even if the condition is not currently limiting.

Why a dyslexia file gets refused, and what fixes it

Learning disabilities are the largest single category of disability in American schools — OCR puts learning-disabled students at roughly 43% of the four million students with disabilities in public elementary and secondary schools. Yet the postsecondary refusal rate for these requests is high, and the reasons repeat.

The good-grades problem. The commonest denial says, in effect, that you have done well, so you cannot be substantially limited. That reasoning is wrong as a matter of law and there is now clear authority saying so. Someone with a learning disability may achieve a high level of academic success and still be substantially limited — because of the additional time and effort they must spend to read or write. The ADA Amendments Act settles the point from the other direction: substantial limitation is assessed without regard to the ameliorative effects of mitigating measures, and the compensating strategies a bright dyslexic student builds — rereading everything twice, working through the night, avoiding timed conditions — are mitigating measures. They cannot be used as proof that the limitation is not there.

The comparison-group problem. The question is whether you are limited compared with most people in the general population, not compared with your classmates and not compared with your own intellectual potential. A file built only on the gap between measured ability and performance is weaker than one built on functional limitation against an ordinary baseline. Both framings should be in the documentation.

The stale-evaluation problem. A childhood diagnosis is not automatically enough at this level. What an assessor should be documenting is current functional impact under the conditions that actually apply — timed reading, sustained reading load, written output under pressure — with age-based adult norms rather than school-age ones.

What to ask for, and how to frame it

Section 504’s postsecondary regulation names extended time, adapted course delivery, course substitution and modified examination formats among the adjustments a college may owe. For dyslexia specifically the requests that tend to be granted are extended time, a reduced-distraction room, text-to-speech or screen-reading software, alternate-format materials, and a notetaker where the disability affects note-taking. Course substitution — most often for a foreign-language requirement — is expressly contemplated by the regulation, and is one of the harder requests, because the college will argue the requirement is essential.

What OCR itself gives as examples

These come from the Office for Civil Rights’ own guidance on hidden disabilities, and they are useful because they show the reasoning rather than a menu:

A student with cancer “may need a class schedule that allows for rest and recuperation following chemotherapy.”
A student whose learning disability affects the ability to demonstrate knowledge on a standardised test “may require modified test arrangements, such as oral testing or different testing formats.”
A student whose learning disability or impaired vision affects note-taking “may need a notetaker or tape recorder.”
A student with kidney or liver disease who has difficulty walking distances or climbing stairs may need “special parking space, sufficient time between classes, or other considerations, to conserve the student’s energy for academic pursuits.”
A student who is emotionally or mentally ill “may need an adjusted class schedule to allow time for regular counseling or therapy.”
A student with epilepsy whose seizures are stimulated by stress “may need accommodation for such stressful activities as lengthy academic testing.”

Notice what these have in common: each starts from a functional barrier and works to a fix. That is the structure a good request follows — not “I have X, so I get Y,” but “this is what X does to me in this setting, and this is what removes the barrier.”

Be aware of one limit that is written into the regulation itself: a college need not provide readers for personal use or study, or devices and services of a personal nature. A reader for an examination is a different question from a reader for your private revision, and requests are refused for blurring the two.

Common questions

My grades are good. Can I still get accommodations?

Yes. The comparison is to most people in the general population, not to your classmates and not to your own results. The effort behind the grades is evidence in your favour, not against you.

My testing is from when I was twelve. Is that enough?

Often, for a lifelong condition. Ask what specifically the school believes has changed, and ask for its documentation policy in writing.

Will my university accommodations carry over to the bar exam or the MCAT?

No. Each testing body decides separately and on its own deadlines. A documented history of use at your institution is the strongest thing you can bring to that application.

I was diagnosed as an adult. Does that hurt my case?

No. Late diagnosis is common, particularly among students who compensated well. What matters is the current evaluation and the functional limitation it establishes.

Can I get out of the foreign language requirement?

Sometimes, through a course substitution, where the disability affects the skill the requirement measures and the requirement is not essential to the degree. Ask for the substitution process by name.

This practice is student-side only

A Students’ Lawyer represents students and families. It does not advise, defend, or consult for colleges, universities, testing agencies, or licensing boards. Knowing how a school is supposed to run this analysis is what makes it possible to show when it has not — where the interactive process was skipped, where an essential-requirement finding was assumed rather than made, where a denial rests on a blanket policy rather than on this student’s documentation. The standard reads the same from either chair. The reason to know it cold is to hold the institution to it.