READ-IT

Teaching early reading skills to adults with intellectual disabilities.

Background

Many people with intellectual disabilities (ID) (also called learning disabilities (LD)) find it difficult to learn to read. This limits their ability to do things independently. Instead, they often need other people to help them complete everyday activities. “Easy Read” is sometimes used to help make information easier to understand. But this “one-size-fits-all” does not work for everyone. Another way of helping may be to teach people with LD to read. If we can teach adults with LD to read, it is possible that they will be able to do more things by themselves and will have a better quality of life.

Reading program

We have developed a reading programme called Teaching early reading skills to adults with LD (READ-IT) based on work that we have done teaching children with LD to read as well as a small project with adults with LD. With READ-IT, adults with LD will take part in an on-line reading programme with additional support from their support workers or family carers using a guide that they will help us to produce.

Study design

We plan to ask 48 adults with LD to take part in a study. They will be put into one of two groups by chance. One group will be taught to read using READ-IT, the other will have no change to their day-to-day activities. Any adult with a LD can take part if they can make the decision to take part and have some basic computer skills. They also need to have a support worker or family carer who is happy to support them. Everyone who takes part will be asked to complete some measures of things that may change during READ-IT. We are particularly interested in how well people can read and how they feel about being able to read. We will also ask about their well-being and quality of life more generally.

After READ-IT has been completed, we will also interview some of the adults with LD, their support workers and family carers. We will ask why they decided to take part and about their experiences having taken part in the study.

This will be a small study, called a feasibility study. If it is a success, we can use what we learn to develop a larger study.

An important part will be working closely with adults with LD, and with the people who help them every day, to make sure that it is easy for them to follow READ-IT and to help us design any future studies.

Dissemination

The findings from the research will be published in academic journals. We will share the findings with families, organisations providing support to people with learning disabilities and with policy makers.