[2] This approach often led to teaching sub-skills of reading in a decontextualized manner, preventing students with special needs from progressing to more advanced literacy lessons and subjecting them to repeated age-inappropriate instruction (e.g. singing the alphabet song).
This approach was an improvement upon previous practices, but it limited the range of literacy skills that people with special needs developed.
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have been identified as having particular difficulties with reading comprehension despite normal decoding abilities,.
[22][23] Additionally, parents and teachers may have low expectations of the child's ability to become a reader, which may influence experiences with text and impact literacy instruction.
[24] Assistive technology (also Alternative and Augmentative Communication devices; AAC) can be used to overcome physical barriers to manipulating books, and to augment speech motor and language difficulties (e.g., type, or select symbols to identify rhyming words), and cognitive impairments (to provide needed support required for target skill acquisition) (Copeland & Keef, 2007, see chapter 9).
Special education teachers[26] may supplement the classroom instruction in reading and writing skills based on the independent performance of their students.