Providing students with supports they can benefit from can be considered across a continuum.
This is referred to as a Student Access Planning Continuum.
As a starting point, educators can focus on how a UDL mindset helps to build in flexible options that are available for ALL students, right from the beginning.
For students with IEPs, teams are required to annually review their assistive technology needs. This process is often is referred to as “AT Consideration”. If AT consideration is a robust, systematic process, applied by site-based IEP teams with collective knowledge of a range of tools available to meet a majority of their student’s needs, then this can result in good AT decisions for most students.
However, there will be some students needing a more in-depth, team-based, problem-solving process which includes collecting assessment data in order to identify and document the supports they need. The “Student Access Planning (SAP)” process is a team-based approach which can be used to complete this type of AT assessment. The SAP process is typically used for students with high-incidence disabilities, and with a focus on more educational productivity needs, to ensure progress in the general education setting. While low-incidence specialists may be part of the SAP process for students with more complex needs, the Open Access project's focus has been on meeting the needs of students with high incidence disabilities-which are often not addressed because of a lack of training of site-based educational teams.
The Open Access project has developed specific resources to support IEP teams and AT Specialists with with the two levels in the AT decision making continuum. Click on the options below to learn more and explore the options to support your teams.
As you explore the two processes, you may have general questions about what they both look like and their similarities and differences. The crosswalk can help answer some of these questions.
