The three of us met in 2014 through our shared interest in adult literacy. We are colleagues as practitioners and as researchers; altogether, we have been in the field of adult literacy in Canada since the 1980s. Our experiences working with learners come from our role as volunteer tutors and paid staff in provincially funded programs and grassroots initiatives funded only through private donations. Over the years, we have worked with learners who have diverse physical, mental and cognitive abilities. For many of these learners who have to contend with day-to-day challenges and discrimination stemming from their (dis)abilities, their learning is further compounded with their struggle with poverty due to the paltry financial support from the government. As we develop and evolve our approaches to support learners in their goals, we put into practice the principles from New Literacy Studies (Gee, 2020; Papen, 2023; Street, 1997) to connect literacy education with the social and historical contexts and to support learners in defining their own literacy. In this paper, each of us shares a story from our own practice to highlight how we offer a learner-centred approach to build a social practice of literacy for both the learners and ourselves as educators. While we use our stories to challenge the dominant narrative of literacy education for employment as seen in government policies (Elfert & Walker, 2020; Elias 2023; Walker & Rubenson, 2014), we also share our own learning, unlearning and relearning of how we define adult literacy as educators. The learner-centred approach in literacy education may not appear especially radical on its own; however, under the increasing pressure from the state to use adult literacy as a labour market tool, the possibility of pursuing learning outcomes other than employment could challenge the deficit narratives that are far-too-often attached to literacy learners with (dis)abilities (Elias et al., 2021).