Editor’s note: This story is the second in a three-part series about ISU students with disabilities. Friday will focus on Jennifer Slaats, a student in elementary education, who uses a wheelchair. Wednesday was the story of Katie Greiman, a senior in communication studies who is hearing-impaired.

Imagine driving down the highway in a car that constantly pulls to the right.

Other cars pass by, effortlessly cruising in a straight line, while you focus all your attention on simply staying on the road.

You miss the scenery, the lane-changing signals of nearby cars, and, by the end of the journey, you’re too tired to appreciate anything other than rest.

Nancy Suby-Bohn is a senior in civil engineering. She also has dysphonetic dyslexia, a language-based disorder characterized by difficulties in word decoding and phonological processing abilities — essentially, reading. She compares trying to read to the above example of a car pulling to the right.

“You’re so focused [on the mechanics of reading] that you don’t get any of the meaning,” she said. “It’s very tiring, like your body after a workout.”

Dyslexia is a genetic neurobiological disorder, according to the International Dyslexia Association. The brain has difficulty processing visual information, and people with dyslexia may have problems identifying words, remembering what they read, recognizing sounds that make up words and translating printed words into spoken words.

This makes college fairly difficult, to say the least. Textbooks suddenly lose their meaning, word problems are complicated mazes and fast-talking professors make note-taking a nearly impossible task.

Suby-Bohn attended Waldorf College after graduating from high school in Ankeny, but quit after two weeks. She then tried Des Moines Area Community College, but that proved too much for her.

“I was so behind,” she said.

Although she worked hard in high school, she was discouraged by her slow progress.

“I was the top of my class in math and failing in reading,” she said. “The teachers just assumed I was lazy. I always felt like I was behind, like I always had to try a little harder.

“Nobody knew I had a disability.”

Suby-Bohn eventually got married and became a stay-at-home mom in Des Moines, taking some college courses. But after all three of her children were tested for and found to have dysphonetic dyslexia, Suby-Bohn tested for it as well.

“I was 32 years old before I found out I had a learning disability,” she said.

Accommodations

After her diagnosis, Suby-Bohn learned that she could get accommodations in class if she went back to school — such as extra time to take exams, computer programs to help read textbooks and extra time on projects. She came back to Iowa State to become a math teacher, but her problem-solving abilities steered her toward engineering.

“I never imagined doing this, not in a million years,” she said.

But reading still presented a problem.

“When I read a sentence, words will literally vanish on me,” she said. She reads her textbooks with the help of a computer program called Kurzweil.

“You take the book, tear it apart and put it into a computer. Kurzweil is a special scanning and reading program,” said Todd Herriott, coordinator of disability resources. “It reads text into a computerized text and audio file — a book on CD.”

The program can read the text aloud and highlight words as Suby-Bohn reads along. There are about 60 students at Iowa State who get books on tape in some form, Herriott said, either from readers or national library. All students, however, must buy their own books.

“It’s not like books on tape that you buy in the store,” Herriott said. “Most students don’t listen to organic chemistry in the car. Also, hearing it spoken is much slower than reading it.”

Suby-Bohn said she couldn’t understand the texts without the program. “The computer has been my wheelchair,” she said.

But you can’t just walk into the disabilities office and ask for books on tape or extra time on tests. Official documentation of a learning disability is necessary, which includes a recent IQ score and psychoeducational testing on a range of subjects such as reading, vocabulary, math, memory and picture descriptions.

The disability resource center needs proof that the student is scoring at least one standard deviation below expected, and testing costs range from $800 to $1800.

“A person with a learning disorder is someone with average or above-average intelligence who, for whatever reason, is performing below a level expected of them based on IQ,” Herriott said.

After the testing, the student meets with Herriott to discuss previous academic experiences and their present situation. Herriott proposes accommodations, such as extended testing time or having tests read to the student. He then submits a note to the professor, detailing the accommodations a student needs. The student’s disability, however, is never revealed.

“The vast majority of professors here at Iowa State really want to help and provide services,” Herriott said.

Suby-Bohn said her experience at Iowa State has been “wonderful,” and that without the accommodations, she “couldn’t do what’s she’s doing now.”

Balancing three kids, a husband, a house in Des Moines and twelve credits of engineering classes isn’t easy. Financial aid dictates that Suby-Bohn must take twelve credits to be a full-time student, disability or no. While she realizes the rules, she wishes that she could be a full-time student with nine.

“Twelve credits is too much,” she said. “There’s still at least one night a week I don’t sleep because I’m doing homework.”