Using Graduated Guidance to Teach iPad Accessibility Skills to High School Students With Severe Intellectual Disabilities

Advances in and the decreased cost of technology has resulted in a significant increase in educational programming that incorporates technology into the school curriculum. Specifically, the use of iPads has become quite common to support students social, communication, and academic outcomes in recent years; however, many students with moderate to severe disability do not have the access skills necessary to navigate these devices independently. This study investigated the effect of graduated guidance on iPad accessibility skill acquisition for three high school students with severe intellectual disability. Students were taught to swipe, drag, touch tap, minimize, and enlarge images on an iPad to access high-interest websites, images, and instructional resources. A multiple probe across students design was used to examine the effects of graduated guidance on the number of trials completed independently on each accessibility skill. Results indicated a functional relationship between the use of graduated guidance and student independent correct physical responses for all three students. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.

Preparing Severely and Profoundly Mentally Retarded Adults for Tests of Motor Fitness

The effectiveness of using behavior shaping techniques to prepare nine institutionalized severely and profoundly mentally retarded adults for tests of motor fitness was assessed. Three severely mentally retarded subjects served as the executive subjects in a yoked-control study. Each executive subject was paired randomly with two profoundly mentally retarded subjects. A three-phase multiple baseline experiment was then conducted with executive subjects; yoked subjects received the same intervention as their executive partner. The training program consisted of a verbal instruction baseline phase, a modeling phase, and a graduated guidance phase. Tasks used for training were the shuttle run and standing long jump. Modeling instruction produced minimal improvement in subject performance; however, graduated guidance instruction produced marked, immediate improvement in the performance of six of nine subjects on both tasks. These results suggest that physical prompting techniques will prepare some, but not all, severely and profoundly mentally retarded adults for motor fitness testing.