Centring on a small-scale capability-based case study of music provision for adults with profound dis/abilities, this paper considers the significance of music and music education in people's lives. It offers a philosophical defence of music's importance in enjoying a truly human life and then, drawing on an overview of the work of dis/abled…

Students with autism often display significant challenges when acquiring friendships and participating in ongoing relationships with typical peers. The social interaction deficits that characterize students with autism are further exacerbated by the severity of the disorder, such that students with low-functioning autism require significantly more…

Successful text comprehension is a complex task, requiring a variety of cognitive skills and processes that support students in making inferences, integrating information across sentences in text, monitoring understanding, and gaining knowledge about text structure. For students with significant intellectual disability (SID), text comprehension is…

Learning to read with comprehension requires that students acquire and integrate an increasingly complex set of skills. Students with severe disabilities are often seen as incapable of mastering and integrating the skills required for reading with fluency and comprehension, a presumption that results in decreased access to comprehensive reading…

This study extended the assessment of a special messaging technology with two additional post-coma adults who had emerged from a minimally conscious state, but showed multiple disabilities including profound motor and communication impairments. For each participant, the study involved an ABAB design, in which the A represented baseline phases and…

To date, it is unknown whether waist circumference can be measured validly and reliably when a subject is in a supine position. This issue is relevant when international standards for healthy participants are applied to persons with severe intellectual, sensory, and motor disabilities. Thus, the aims of our study were (1) to determine the validity…

Children with severe or profound intellectual and motor disabilities often present problems of balance and ambulation and spend much of their time sitting or lying, with negative consequences for their development and social status. Recent research has shown the possibility of using a walker (support) device and microswitches with preferred…

Purpose: This research investigated the use of a dynamic assessment (DA) to identify differences among young children with severe disabilities, which would predict progress in learning behaviors indicating coordinated joint attention (CJA). Method: Six children 10-24 months of age were enrolled in a 16-week treatment for behaviors indicating CJA,…

Preschoolers with severe autism and minimal speech were assigned either a discrete trial or a naturalistic language treatment, and parents of all participants also received parent responsiveness training. After 12 weeks, both groups showed comparable improvement in number of spoken words produced, on average. Approximately half the children in…

This study investigated the frequency of community participation and level of assistance needed to perform domestic and safety skills for individuals with severe disabilities who live successfully in the community, based on type of residence and hours of in-home support provided. Participants included residential specialists from small community…

This paper explores recovery-promoting care as experienced by persons with concomitant severe mental illness and substance misuse. Sixteen in-depth interviews, based on an interview guide concerning their experiences of health, life situation and care, were held with eight participants in an outpatient treatment programme. The analysis aimed to…

The aim of this retrospective study was to retrace the trajectories and long-term outcomes of individuals with autism in France, and to explore the family experiences. Data obtained from parents enables us to follow the trajectories of 76 adults. Two-thirds of adults with severe autism had a very poor outcome. Those with moderate autism had a…

Background: Many previous family quality of life studies have relied on parental information for understanding if and how having a sibling with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD) influences the sibling's quality of life. In the current study, children had the opportunity to describe both positive and negative aspects of having…

This study seeks to address the current literacy skills, practices, and dispositions of teachers who educate students with significant disabilities. It sought to address two questions including how do teachers who educate students with significant disabilities design and implement literacy instruction, and how do teachers who educate students with…

Although federal law now mandates age-appropriate transition assessment as a key component of high-quality transition planning, little research exists to guide educators on what they might learn when undertaking this process. In this study, the authors examined teacher and parent assessments of the transition-related strengths and needs of 134…