The White Spaces of Dyslexic Difference: An intersectional analysis

Dyslexia is the most common ‘specific learning difficulty’ (SpLD) in the UK and is understood to affect 10% of the population (BDA, https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk, 2021). Within the student population of art and design Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), the percentage is much greater. This means that dyslexia inclusion policy and practice has a more significant impact on the effectiveness of overall inclusion work than it does for non-art and design HEIs. This chapter takes an intersectional (Crenshaw, Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299, 1991) approach to dyslexia inclusion policy and practice in art and design HEIs and considers this in relation to the ongoing, unacceptable assessment differential between UK home Black and UK home white students. In so doing, it departs from more usual approaches to dyslexia which tend to engage with it purely in terms of a binary difference between a distinct, undifferentiated dyslexic minority on the one hand and a non-dyslexic norm on the other.

I argue that it is necessary to ask if dyslexia policy and practice can be seen to be exclusionary in relation to UK home Black students and that the requirement of formal dyslexia assessment, in its current form, as a pre-requisite for the allocation of additional support for dyslexic learners may need to be rethought. I suggest that a rethinking of data collection practice both in higher education and in dyslexia charitable organisations is required in order to address these questions.