Drawing from linguistic ethnographic data in what is referred to as accommodated language education for adults, including migrant learners with PTSD, migration stress, deafness, hearing impairment and/or intellectual disability, we here focus on the latter category of learners, and their teacher, in one Swedish language learning group. We analyze and discuss their work with storytelling, which we relate to a crip linguistics approach, forming a site for disruption of an ableist discourse and logocentrism. Our close-up analyses show how aspects of suspense and surprise are shaped via an assemblage of modalities and materialities in collective storytelling that build upon created fictive figures and unexpected events. The paper contributes empirical and theoretical knowledge about this approach, embedded in crip theory, which is shown to provide opportunities for incorporating embodied, emotional and creative aspects in work with narrative text of importance for epistemic justice in education. We foreground linguistic ethnography as a promising avenue for examining storytelling literacies in language education among learners with ID, from a critical lens.