ACCESS! Teaching Writing Skills to Students with Intellectual Disability

The purpose of this article is to provide teachers with tools that they can use to teach written expression to school-age students with intellectual disabilities. These tools are presented around the mnemonic ACCESS: accommodations and assistive technologies, concrete topics, critical skills, explicit instruction, strategy instruction, systematic evaluation. Teachers should consider all six components of ACCESS while planning. They are presented in the order of the acronym, but this does not necessarily prescribe the planning order.