GVSU will move to REMOTE STATUS for Friday, Jan. 23, 2026 due to current and forecasted travel/road conditions. Students, faculty and staff, please check your email for details.
Literacy and Students with Autism
The START Project staff are identifying key characteristics impacting literacy for students with autism and developing tools that may be helpful to supporting students. While autistic students tend to demonstrate excellent word recognition and decoding skills, there are inherent challenges and impairment in the area of reading comprehension, often due to the fundamental characteristics of the disability.
Literacy Webinars
Literacy Strategies for Students with ASD: Introduction
Literacy Strategies for Students with ASD: Joint Attention and Social Engagement
Literacy Strategies for Students with ASD: Theory of Mind & Emotional Reciprocity Strategies & Resources
Top 10 Impact on Literacy Checklist for Students with Autism
The START Impact on Literacy Checklist for Students with Autism: The Top 10 is a tool developed as a checklist to identify key characteristics that impact reading comprehension in students with autism. Within those characteristics, three sub deficit areas were identified explaining how the corresponding characteristic may impact reading literacy. Strategies were then identified corresponding with autistic characteristics and challenge areas. The tool was designed to provide guidance on strategies that have demonstrated through current research to be useful interventions for specific characteristics of autism. View the Literacy Checklist here.
