Providing Accessible Texts for Adolescents/Young Adults With Intellectual and Developmental Disability

Presentation given at Accessible Resources to Prepare Individuals for Employment at the Council for Exceptional Children L.I.V.E. Independent access to text is a critical skill for postsecondary success; however, literacy skill deficits make access to texts challenging for individuals with intellectual disabilities. This session will examine a study on the text comprehension of employee policies and procedures for four college-students with ID through the use of a universally designed employee handbook, graphic organizers, and systematic instruction. Results indicate that participants made improvements in overall text comprehension and independent navigation of the text-to-speech tool found in iPads®. Recommendations and implications for practice and further research are also discussed.