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Students with dyscalculia are typically thought of by both researchers and educators as having deficits. The deficit language permeates studies of dyscalculia as well as assessments and documentation of students in schools. In this paper, we offer an alternative to the dominant narrative. We understand disabilities, and dyscalculia specifically, as resulting from cognitive differences--not deficits--which lead to issues of access. We provide a case study of Dylan (second author), an individual with dyscalculia who decided to major in statistics at University of California, Berkeley and become a statistician. Although she experienced significant issues of access--both in the standard tools used to do mathematics, and in navigating the structures at the university--she developed systems to enable her to compensate. She collaborated in this research enterprise in order to share with researchers, teachers, parents, and students her experiences with dyscalculia and how she was able to succeed in higher level mathematics. Informed by previous empirical work, we collected video recordings of Dylan's deliberate efforts to share insights and strategies with another student with dyscalculia. In this work, Dylan challenges dominant and problematic myths about ability and mathematics.

Research on mathematics learning disability (i.e., dyscalculia) tends to adopt a deficit model of the learner and quantify the ways in which these students are deficient. In this study we adopt a radically different approach. We understand disabilities to result from issues of access, and we explore mathematics learning disability (MLD) by leveraging the expertise of an individual with first-hand experience with this disability. Dylan (second author) has a unique perspective because, in addition to having an MLD, she also majored in statistics in college. Through videotaped interviews we documented the issues of access Dylan encountered and the ways in which she compensated to gain access. In this article we focus specifically on the topic of fractions, and identify Dylan's issues of access with standard representations of fractions, including symbolic notation, area models, and fraction manipulatives. These issues of access mirrored the difficulties documented in other students with MLD, but were not similarly problematic for Dylan. This research provides novel insight into the difficulties experienced by students with MLD, reframes deficits in terms of issues of access, and demonstrates how an individual with an MLD may learn to compensate.

In this article, we provide a novel view of mathematics learning disability (MLD) by studying a student with an MLD (Dylan) who had compensated so effectively that she was able to major in statistics. We push back on the dominant deficit model used in studies of MLD, and consider issues of access and compensation from a Vygotskian theoretical frame. Through 8 videotaped interview sessions, we identified that Dylan's primary difficulties were with mathematical notation and number sense, which resulted in issues accessing standard mathematical forms. Analysis revealed 8 compensatory strategies that Dylan used to address these issues of access. We frame our approach as emancipatory research. Dylan was involved in all phases of the study's design, implementation, analysis, and dissemination, and is the second author. This work acknowledges that individuals with disabilities have research agendas of their own and have critical insight to share about the lived experience of their disability.