Reading instruction for students with intellectual disabilities who require augmentative and alternative communication: A multiple single case study with baseline, posttest, follow-up, and maintenance.

Seven elementary students with intellectual disability who use AAC devices got daily phonics lessons. The team used the Accessible Literacy Learning program in the kids’ own classroom for 20 minutes a day.

They ran a multiple-baseline design across students. Each child started the lessons only after the prior kid showed gains, so the team could be sure the teaching caused the change.

Every child learned to match letters to sounds and to sound out short words. Six of the seven kept these skills four weeks later with no extra practice.

The kids also moved from zero to an average of 18 correct letter–sound matches in one minute. One student could read 12 new words by the end of the study.

Davenport et al. (2019) also saw strong reading gains, but they trained teachers to run a racing-game fluency drill. Both studies show that when staff follow a clear script, kids learn.

Morgan et al. (2025) taught preschoolers to read-do correspondence by hiding toys behind written directions. Britt’s older AAC users needed phonics first, while Morgan’s younger kids skipped straight to comprehension—an apparent contradiction that fades when you see the different starting skills.

Järvinen et al. (2015) found that older struggling readers improved comprehension with computer drills, but decoding drills only lifted speed. Britt’s work extends this by proving that the youngest students with ID and AAC can still build the decoding layer if you start with systematic phonics.

You no longer have to wait for speech to emerge before teaching reading. Bring the Accessible Literacy Learning kit—or any scripted phonics program—to your classroom, run it daily for 20 minutes, and collect brief timing data. Your AAC users can master letter–sound links and begin to decode just like their peers.