IDEIA mandates that parents be active participants in the educational decision-making process for their children. It is recommended that parents and professionals collaborate for individualized educational services for students with disabilities, especially for students with significant disabilities. Research suggests that parents must advocate…

Adolescents with multiple or severe disabilities often lack access to opportunities available to their typically developing peers, whose in-school friendships are often reinforced through other out-of-school, and sometimes interschool, activities. Limitations to these opportunities can be a result of attending a separate school designed to provide…

Alternative and augmentative communication (AAC) technology is being increasingly recognised as an important means of fostering the literacy of students with significant disabilities. However, the coordinated use of AAC technology continues to challenge professionals, families and users leading to dissonant meanings and fragmented use. This paper…

Purpose: The present article illustrates how the National Household Education Surveys (NHES; U.S. Department of Education, 2009) database might be used to address questions of relevance to researchers who are concerned with literacy development among young children. Following a general description of the NHES database, a study is provided that…

The present study assessed the possibility of assisting four persons with multiple disabilities to move through and perform simple occupational activities arranged within a room with the help of automatic prompting. The study involved two multiple probe designs across participants. The first multiple probe concerned the two participants with…

This review examines practices for building effective communication strategies for children with visual impairments, including those with additional disabilities, that have been tested by single-subject design methodology. The authors found 30 studies that met the search criteria and grouped intervention strategies to align any evidence of the…

A multicomponent training package (live training, video modeling, role playing, and feedback) was used to train teachers to conduct assessment and to instruct students with profound multiple disabilities. Phase 1 of the study involved training seven teachers to conduct assessment in three areas: (a) preference assessment (i.e., identification of…

The youngest deaf and hard of hearing children with disabilities in Colorado can now participate more fully in the world around them thanks to funding from grants solicited through the Early Education Department at the Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind. The grants enable the children, from birth to age 3, to overcome their physical…

Purpose: This study was designed to test the word learning abilities of adults with typical language abilities, those with a history of disorders of spoken or written language (hDSWL), and hDSWL plus attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (+ADHD). Methods: Sixty-eight adults were required to associate a novel object with a novel label, and then…

Children with multiple disabilities, often experience challenges in communication, mobility, and learning. Despite these challenges, substantial research exists that documents successful educational methods and strategies for these students. Specifically, students with multiple disabilities have successfully been taught to use a voice output…

Although every child with disabilities may come to self-actualization by different means and measurements it is, nevertheless, an important goal. The child with disabilities may be guided toward her goal of self-actualization by being encouraged to find her individual strengths and capacities, and by being assisted to successfully interact with…

The author outlines the history, current situation, and the future of the care and support system for people with intellectual and multiple disabilities in Japan. He describes how the service system has been shaped from within by Japanese legislation dating back to the Child Welfare Act of 1947, and how international events such as the…

In supporting individuals with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD), professionals have expressed the need for a person-centered planning method especially targeted for the highly complex and specialized support needs of these clients. The current study has evaluated the effectiveness of an Individual Support Program especially…

The principle of age-appropriateness is widespread throughout government policy and nongovernment practice guidelines, but the exact meaning of the term is rarely defined. It is commonly assumed to mean activities and approaches commensurate with an individual's chronological age. Dress, furnishing, object selection, and the style of interactions,…

Because of a shortage of valid instruments to measure the QOL of people with profound multiple disabilities (PMD), the QOL-PMD was developed. In the present study, possibilities for item reduction as well as the psychometric properties of the questionnaire were examined. One hundred and forty-seven informants of people with PMD participated in the…