Barriers concentrate particularly around timed, text-heavy, or unexpectedly verbal tasks — situations where a compensation strategy that works under normal conditions breaks down.
|
Setting |
What it looks like |
|
Reading-intensive courses |
Long readings and dense academic texts assigned with little lead time to work through them. |
|
Digital materials |
Inaccessible, image-only PDFs; cluttered, text-heavy slides that are hard to process quickly. |
|
Assessment |
Timed, speed-based exams that disadvantage processing speed rather than actual subject knowledge. |
|
Written tasks |
Heavy writing demands — essays, reports, note-taking — with no alternative format offered. |
|
Communication with staff |
Unclear or hidden marking criteria; ambiguous task expectations that require inference. |
|
Group work / seminars |
Being asked to read aloud unexpectedly, without any advance choice in the matter. |