1

Visual Supports for Students with Disabilities

Alicia Hembree and Kimberly Graham
The National Center for Education Statistics (2013) reported that the number of children
and youth ages 3-21 receiving special education services was 6.4 million in 2012-2013.
Children who receive services are identified by a team of professionals as having a disability
that adversely affects academic performance and as being in need of special education and
related services (The National, 2013). These disabilities cover a wide spectrum from blindness
to Traumatic Brain Injury. With a multitude of disabilities to consider, the teachers are constantly
trying to discover new strategies to increase the academic achievement of these students.
Students with disabilities face many unique challenges when learning new information and need
creative and innovative techniques in order to learn and retain information. How can teachers
address these challenges?
Several studies suggest the use of visual graphics to assist students with disabilities in
their learning outcomes. In reviewing the literature, an inquiry was made on how using visual
supports with students with disabilities is different than using visual supports with students
without disabilities. After investigating the research, many articles address how visuals are used
with different disabilities and how students may or may not benefit from the use of visuals. The
following articles address these inquires and other implications.
Article 1
Zebehazy, K. T. & Wilton, A. P. (2014). Charting success: The experience of teacher of students
with visual impairment in promoting student use of graphics. Journal of Visual
Impairment and Blindness, 263-274.

Zebehazy and Wilton researched the use of visual graphics by students with visual
impairments. The study was conducted used both quantitative and qualitative techniques by
analyzing surveys conducted with teachers of students with visual impairments both in Canada
and the United States. The quantitative data consisted of the responses from 26 Likert scale
questions. The qualitative items were comprised of five open-ended questions. The survey link
was emailed to teachers of the visually impaired and 306 teachers responded. The answers to the
open-ended questions were categorized into five groups summarized as barriers for print graphic
users, barriers for tactile graphic users, tactile graphic instructional strategies, tactile print user
success, and print graphic user success. Then, the answers were analyzed to find common themes
and then broken down to subthemes.
The results of the study found that although teachers use visuals often in their instruction,
they face many challenges. A few of the challenges mentioned were the lack of time to produce
the visuals, lack of time to teach the materials, lack of consistency of the materials produced, and
student development through the use of visuals. In the future, teachers should advocate for
appropriate service levels, early exposure to curriculum, and continued graphic literacy.
Although the researchers provided adequate data, more information on the participants of the
study was needed to truly understand the data set. What grade level do they teach? How long
have they been teaching? What preparation programs have they attended? All of these factors
influence not only their opinions on the use of visuals, but also their implementation of graphics
into their classroom.
The article brought forth many new insights to the study of graphics. Usually people tend
to think of graphics as something someone sees with their eyes, however, this article introduces
the use of tactile graphics for students with visual impairments. A blind persons eyes are

essentially their hands. They must see the graphic with their hands. Although the exposure to
graphics is different, the students continue to receive information in two different ways
increasing the likeliness of retention and comprehension of the information.
Article 2
Gast, D.L., Luscre, D., Pierce, J. M., & Spriggs, A. D. (2013). Effects of visual activity schedules
on independent classroom transitions for students with autism. International Journal of
Disability, Development, and Education, 60, 253-269.
The article presents research on the effectiveness of visual activity schedules on the
behavior of students with autism. A visual behavior system is a set of pictures to describe a
sequence of events. The participants of this study were four students who were served in a selfcontained class for students with moderate Autism. The intervention took place in the students
self-contained classroom, where they spent most of their school day. The researchers used an
experimental design which resulted in quantitative data. The students were observed presenting
the behaviors and they repeatedly introduced and withdrew the intervention. They collected data
using event recording. When the VAB was in place, increased independent transition behaviors
were observed across all four students. The results correlated with previous research completed
with other disabilities that supports using visual activity schedules with students with intellectual
disabilities and learning disabilities.
To strengthen the research, the researchers could have taken data across multiple settings.
The current study only addressed the use of visual activity schedules in the self-contained
classroom and not more inclusive settings such as the lunchroom or special classes. The
population of the study was also very limited, so limited that we cannot make generalizations

regarding the results. The population of the study did not reflect varying ages, genders, or races.
The results of the study help support the idea that students with disabilities need visual
communication tools to communicate effectively and improve their overall understanding. The
strategy of using visual activity schedules can increase independent behaviors and support
students in transitions.
Article 3
Ciullo, S. (2015). Improving Access to Elementary Social Studies Instruction: Strategies to
Support Students with Learning Disabilities. Teaching Exceptional Children. Nov/Dec,
(102-109). http://tcx.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/09/25/0040059915605640.extract
The article presents the idea that elementary age students are receiving less instruction in
social students. The principle reason the author provides for this disparity is because the other
core subjects, reading, language arts, math and science, have a mandated standardized test at the
end of the school year. Thus, teachers, feeling the pressure to have their students exhibit good
performance on these test, spend the vast majority of instructional time on those subjects, to the
exclusion of social studies. Specifically, the article focuses on how this minimized instruction
affects students with disabilities. The article provides a variety of strategies to incorporate social
studies into the curriculum, with considerations specific to students with disabilities. The author
predominantly describes the process of using qualitative data to prove the worthiness of the
strategies. Two of the strategies, promoting social studies curricula within co-taught, inclusion,
classes and applying evidence based strategies within a station teaching framework, are the
perfect opportunity for introducing media-based instruction to revolutionize the existing teaching
pedagogy. However, the article is quite limited with regards to an understanding of the use of

multimedia instruction as more than a tool in one of these strategies and with regards to the use
of quantitative data.
The primary strength of this article is the understanding that students with disabilities
deserve equitable access to the curriculum, including the social studies curriculum. The strategy
of promoting social studies curricula within co-taught classes incorporates the use of various
websites designed to promote reading comprehension for students with disabilities. However, the
use of websites as a tool for aiding instruction espouses main weakness of this piece. If teachers
use websites, apps, smart boards, etc. as merely tools to add to existing pedagogy, then the actual
learning process never changes. For example, this strategy could have included reading strategies
that incorporate visual timelines, like those created on piktochart.com, or graphic cartoons that
both aid in reading comprehension and utilized the brain-based strategies (with regards to the
power of visual media). Additionally, the second strategy of applying evidence based strategies is
equally limited. One of the strategies described in this section as being successful for students
with disabilities is process of breaking materials into smaller chunks, as opposed to larger, lessstreamlined instruction. Again, this is a sound practice, but by incorporating media into the
presentation of the small segments of curriculum, students with disabilities could be provided
with more individualized, more powerful learning. And, to strengthen the research, the article
could have provided quantitative data: pre- and post- tests, benchmarks, cumulative assessment,
etc.
Reflection
To move past merely using media to add to existing teaching practices, sufficient practice
and research analyzing those practices must occur. What I encountered during this research
process it that the existing research is often too limited in scope and/or lacks practices that

exhibit a shift in teaching pedagogy to full implementation of instructional technology. The

category of students with disabilities provides an excellent opportunity to prove to adopters,
particularly skeptical adopters that a pedagogy shift towards fully-integrated multi-media
instruction provides a personalized learning experience that can and will change the education
system as we know it. To be quite honest, I continue to find it alarming that the shift has made
little headway in the realm of k-12 academia. Actually, as an innovator, the limited existing
research with regards to multi-media instruction for students with disabilities forces me to realize
the significance of my role in my school.
I believe that a small re-designing my materials is a step towards fully-integrating, but I
am also realizing that I can and should conduct research, both qualitative and quantitative,
discussing my practices. To share this innovation successfully, I have to have proof. Why not
target my research towards students with disabilities? The brain-based research has proven the
impact visual media can have on learning, and this group, with historically low achievement in
comparison to other peer groups, would reap the most benefit. In addition, I can see the future of
this practice changing the face of IEP (Individualized Education Plan) documents. How existing
would it be if the categories changed from small-group instruction to personalized instruction
via multi-media modules? Perhaps that is the way to initiate the conversation for change at our
schools. Students with disabilities are always as a topic during professional development, faculty
meetings, instructional planning, etc. And, in general, educators are quite open to trying new
strategies to reach these students. However, for the adoption to be successful, the faculty must
clearly understand that this is not another new tool. This is a fundamental shift in the way we
teach!