The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires children enrolled in Part C to have a transition plan in place at least 90 days before the child's third birthday (IDEA, 2004). This plan may include a transition to Part B services or an option to continue with Part C services until kindergarten (IDEA, 2004, §303.211). For the…

"Augmentative and alternative communication" (AAC) refers to a wide variety of communication devices, systems, tools, and strategies that support or replace spoken language. Augmentative and alternative communication users represent a range of ages, abilities, and communication needs. Support for AAC often begins in the public school…

Mateo was like many students, neither fluent in English nor in American Sign Language (ASL) and significantly delayed in literacy skills. At Model Secondary School for the Deaf (MSSD), he was provided with emerging signers services to develop his expressive and receptive ASL skills. He was also provided with speech and language services by a…

Families play an important role in ensuring their child with a disability has access to the educational materials they need to learn and succeed. This guide is designed for parents and caregivers of children who require accessible educational materials (AEM) for learning. It will provide you with information about what AEM are, how they can…

In 2004, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act outlined specific considerations for students with individual education programs in relation to their needs and application of assistive technology (AT) devices and services used to access school curriculum. Teachers will interact with a variety of assistive technologies during their career…

In this brief response to Agran et al., I provide data on the extent to which students with the most significant cognitive disabilities (i.e., those students participating in alternate assessments on alternate achievement standards) are separated educationally from their peers without disabilities. I further discuss additional factors that may be…

Commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) III, the purpose of this commentary is to describe school-based and school-relevant interventions and instructional approaches for children and youth with autism that have been developed and employed during that time period. The commentary begins with a brief…

Federal legislation such as IDEA (1997) and NCLB (2001) have led to an increase in the number of students with significant disabilities receiving instruction in the general education classroom. This inclusionary movement has established a more diverse student population in which general and special education teachers are responsible for providing…

Even as research continues to suggest the potential of assistive technology for improving student outcomes, it remains under-utilized in schools. Among numerous challenges to the effective utilization of assistive technology, research has suggested that educators are inadequately prepared to consider and implement the use of such technologies. In…

School-based speech-language pathologists are obligated to apply evidence-based practice and document progress of their students' response to intervention in compliance with federal law. The purpose of this preliminary study was to explore the effects of an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC)-based intervention provided in a camp…

Surveying 15 states and 39,837 students, this study examined the extent to which students who took an alternate assessment based on alternate achievement standards in the 2010--2011 school year had access to regular education settings and the extent to which that access correlated with expressive communication, use of an augmentative or…

PEPNet's "Perspectives" is the collaborative newsletter of the four PEPNet regional centers. This newsletter combines each centers individual strengths into a single resource that can be used on a national level. The articles in this issue are: (1) PEPNet Director's Corner: Postsecondary Education Consortium (Marcia Kolvitz); (2) PEPNet…

I investigated the presence, utility, and emergence of tacit knowledge in 9 study participants who used assistive-augmentative technology. I conducted phenomenologic interviews, audio-taping, and transcribed the interview with the written consent of the participants. Sixteen highly trained experts critiqued the final product of the interviews and…

This study evaluated the augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) assessment and prescriptive practices currently used in various states, through a survey of project directors in all 50 states receiving funding under the Technology Related Assistance for Individuals with Disabilities Act of 1994. The survey instrument assessed directors'…

This text contains papers presented at the annual conference of the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America (RESNA) held on June 28-July 2, 2000, in Orlando, Florida. Papers are divided into the following sections: (1) technology for special populations, which includes papers that discuss using…