Expanding Literacy for Learners with Intellectual Disabilities: The Role of Supported eText

Abstract

A series of single-subject experiments were conducted to evaluate the effects of presentational, translational, illustrative, instructional, and summarizing supports on the reading and listening comprehension of students with moderate intellectual disabilities. The specific eText supports under investigation included digitized voice and text-to-speech, text highlighting, video summaries, text-linked photographs, and graphic organizers. Two eText supports were found to be effective in supporting text comprehension for this population: reading the text out loud (using either recorded voice or text-to-speech), and graphic organizers. The findings also revealed the importance of providing explicit instruction in how to use eText supports. The article summarizes six studies and discusses the implications of the results for students with moderate intellectual disabilities, their teachers, and their parents.

Support Needs of Adults with Intellectual Disability across Domains: The Role of Technology

“…Douglas, Ayres, Langone, Bell and Meade (2009) examined the use of eText supports to reading and listening comprehension for students with intellectual disability, determining that recorded voice or text-to-speech supports and graphic organizers improved text comprehension. Mechling, Gast, and Thompson (2008) found that the use of SMART board technology in combination with flash card instruction improved acquisition of sight words, both targeted and through observational learning.…”

The Use of Technology to Assist School-Aged Students with High Incidence Special Needs in Reading

“…Much more promising is examining areas of reading instruction that utilize traditional best practices, but either pair them with online reading work after teacher instruction [28][29][30] or present traditional reading strategies online [31][32][33][34][35]. Though the results of these studies are far from conclusive, they point to several directions moving forward to support SWSNs in their work in online reading environments around what is already known about quality reading strategies.…”

“…Gains were also seen in using computerized graphic organizers for writing. In another study, researchers completed six single-subject investigations with students with high incidence disabilities that utilized targeted online reading environments [29]. Students utilized graphic organizers and screen readers to repeatedly read a story, watch videos, highlight text, and view multiple presentations of instruction.…”

Supported eText: Literacy Scaffolding for Students with Disabilities

“…Two of these eText supports were found to have considerable potential for expanding the literacy of participating students: text that was read out loud (using either recorded voice or text-to-speech), and graphic organizers. Their article highlights the challenges of conducting research with this population of students and discusses the potential benefits of increased literacy for students with intellectual disabilities as well as for their teachers and parents (Douglas, Ayres, Langone, Bell, & Meade, 2009). …”

“…One of the studies investigated the use of supported eText in an online curriculum focused on information literacy skills for high school students (Izzo et al, 2009). And, one of the studies explored ways to expand student literacy by supporting the reading of simplified text from a popular novel and a variety of materials focused on improving independent living and life skills (Douglas et al, 2009). …”