This paper reports the voices of students diagnosed with dyslexia who are about to start their university studies. The paper reports a qualitative research on how they experience  barriers that have hindered their learning in their school career.

Dyslexia interferes with the learning process through written language, both in reading and writing, and may affect the person for life. Inappropriate intervention at school, either due to lack of identification or because the students difficulties have not been taken seriously, can produce barriers to their cognitive development (Gayán, 2001). The student may suffer the consequences of in appropriate teaching methods that may affect his or her emotional development, such as low self-esteem, anxiety, frustration, depression and more.

Students with dyslexia may fail academically if their difficulties are not identified early, wasting their potential and reducing their opportunities to succeed in life. In this sense, the Equal opportunities for learning promoted by international agencies such as UNESCO’s charter (2008) or OCDE (2007) on Education for All is out of reach for these students, and may result in their dropping out of education prematurely.

In Spain, there is no data available on the number of students diagnosed with dyslexia (Jiménez et. al., 2009), but according to several studies (González et al., 2010) it is estimated that between 5% and 10% of the student and adult population may be identified with dyslexia.

As stated by Serrano (2005), dyslexia may be undetected in a language that is as transparent in its written form as is the Spanish language. Therefore it is necessary to consider the issues involved and improve the identification and teaching of children with dyslexia in school and society, in order to avoid the suffering that they and their families may endure.

From the perspectives of educators and schools attitudinal barriers created by teachers impede the learning and success of students with dyslexia. These attitudes are according to Gitlow (2001) very difficult to change since they are related to teachers’ beliefs and expectations.

This paper shows preliminary results from a study conducted with students diagnosed with dyslexia who have passed the entrance exams to university enabling them to start their university education. The purpose of the study is to provide proposals for action to promote changes in the internal structures of the classroom in primary and secondary school practices. There are two main objectives: a) to recognize the problems that students express themselves about their journey through primary and secondary education; b) identify barriers to students’ participation and learning, that may be affected by teachers attitudes.

Then study applies a biographical-narrative method (Hornillo and Sarasola, 2003; Bolívar, Domingo and Fernández, 2001), focal groups were used collect data from the research participants to get at their experiences through their own voices (Rudduck and Flutter, 2007). This approach allows us to analyze the interaction between personal characteristics of students with dyslexia and social and educational context in which they occur (Blanco, 2009).

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