Bridging the Accommodations Gap in K12 and Higher Education

Everyone should have equal access to quality education. Simple, right?

Not in practice. No two learners are exactly the same, so no single solution can remove everyone’s barriers to learning. There’s plenty we can do to provide inclusive education for all students.

Unfortunately, we’re still falling short—even as our understanding of inclusion continues to evolve.

In the 20th century, the legal and strategic frameworks for educational inclusion focused on students with disabilities. That’s still an important part of inclusive education, but a 21st-century approach like Universal Design for Learning emphasizes support for human variability of all types—not just in terms of ability, but also language diversity, socio-cultural background, learning preferences, and more.

Still, accessibility law provides a strong basis for all of today’s inclusivity solutions, both on the local level and globally. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) requires signatory states to ensure that “persons with disabilities are not excluded from the general education system…”

The CRPD also gives us some ideas on how to meet this requirement. It instructs educators to provide “reasonable accommodation of the individual’s requirements.”

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at these accommodations in both K-12 and higher education. We’ll examine the negative consequences of missing accommodations. And we’ll suggest a few strategies for bridging the access gap—including through the use of edtech tools from ReadSpeaker.

What Are Accommodations in Education?

In the context of education, an accommodation is a tool that supports equal access to learning. The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) Accessibility Manual offers a more precise definition:

Accommodations are changes in procedures or materials which (a) ensure that a student has equitable access to instructional and assessment content and (b) support valid assessment results for those students who require them.

In the U.S., nondiscrimination laws like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act require schools to provide these accommodations. According to IDEA, accommodations must be listed in each student’s mandated Individualized Education Program (IEP).

The CCSSO lists the following examples of accommodations for state-run assessments:

• American Sign Language (ASL)
• Closed Captioning
• Braille
• Extended Time
• Large-Print Materials
• Assistive Technology

This last item—assistive technology—is a broad category that includes everything from customized keyboards to integrated text-to-speech (TTS) tools, which automatically translate writing into audible language.

Inclusive education requires the implementation of diverse accommodations in the classroom. This approach reduces barriers related to disabilities, language differences, and the varying individual learning preferences.

Unfortunately, not everyone who needs accommodations—let alone qualifies for them under IDEA, Section 504, or the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)—has them.

• At least one-fifth of students with ADHD, between the ages of 4 and 17, don’t get any supportive school services.
• For years, studies have shown students of color getting special education services at disproportionately low rates.
• In college, things only get worse. Between 2009 and 2016, only 37% of students with disabilities disclosed this status to the institution—and schools generally don’t hand out accommodations without such disclosure.

This “accommodations gap” leads to two questions: First, why aren’t students getting the services they need? And secondly, what can we do about it?

Identifying the Accommodations Gap in K12 Education

In the 2021-22 school year, 15% of K12 students in public schools received services under IDEA, the law that requires IEPs for students with disabilities.

Those IEPs tell educators and parents what sorts of accommodations students will receive, so that 15% figure—which represents 7.3 million students with disabilities—is a strong indicator of how many students get the support they need in school.

The trouble is that more than 15% of K12 students probably need alternative presentations and assistive technologies. Closer to 20% of U.S. children have dyslexia, ADHD, or other learning differences, reports Understood—and that’s just one cluster of traits that lead to particular classroom needs.

“This means millions of kids who learn and think differently aren’t being identified by schools as needing support,” says advocacy non-profit Understood.

Indeed, “specific learning disabilities” like dyslexia are the most common type of disabilities among students covered by IDEA. They make up about a third of these students.

• Another 19% of service-recipients have a speech or language impairment.
• About 15% have an unspecified “health impairment.”
• Just over 12% have autism.

These are the students who are receiving services under IDEA.

We’re concerned about the students who aren’t—and there’s evidence that wider societal biases lead to unequal access in the classroom.

The Role of Social Inequality in the Accommodations Gap

Accurate diagnoses and access to services vary based on geographic location. Imbalances can be associated with social factors like race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.

In the 2021-22 school year, about 11% of K12 students in Hawaii received services through IDEA. More than 20% of students in New York did. These differences appear not just between states, but among school districts within each state—with more services often available in wealthier school districts.

The inescapable conclusion is that many K12 students don’t get the accommodations they need to succeed in school. That can lead to poor performance, frustration, low self-esteem, and, eventually, higher dropout rates. These problems continue into higher education, too.

Missing Accommodations in Higher Education

The best-documented problem in higher-ed accessibility is disclosure. As we mentioned previously, less than 40% of the college students who are eligible for accommodations claim these supports. This is significant, considering that over 20% of undergraduates and more than 10% of graduate students have disabilities.

If accommodations are available, why aren’t the students who need them asking for them?

Researchers have uncovered a few answers to this question:

• The ADA National Network identifies “fear of disclosure” and “stigma” as barriers to disclosure for college students with psychiatric disabilities.
• In a 2012 survey of college students, respondents told the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) that “the process for obtaining accommodations is too burdensome and requires too much documentation.”
• A 2024 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that students with disabilities often simply don’t know how to request accommodations. That same report also found that faculty are sometimes unwilling or slow to provide accommodations, even when asked.

To summarize: Some college students don’t ask for accommodations—to which they’re entitled by law—because of social stigma. Others find the process too difficult. Some simply don’t know how to navigate these requests. Finally, there are students who overcome all of these barriers, only to encounter reluctance on the part of their instructors.

Whatever the reason, there’s a heavy price to pay for missing accommodations. Students pay that price, of course, but so does society at large.

How the Accommodations Gap Harms Us All

Students who don’t get the accommodations they need don’t learn what you’re trying to teach them, so they perform poorly. Poor academic performance leads to mental health challenges and higher dropout rates.

Students who need accommodations drop out of school at higher rates than those who don’t. Consider:

• In 2020, the dropout rate for U.S. high school students was 7%.
• For students who received services under IDEA, the dropout rate was over 21%.
• For service-recipients with co-occurring mental health issues, the dropout rate was nearly 39%.

Students with disabilities who make it to college continue to face an uphill battle. A 2024 GAO analysis of the 2017 Education’s Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS) showed some startling discrepancies.

• 30% of college students without disabilities quit school without a degree.
• 47% of college students with disabilities left without a degree.
• Students with disabilities had lower average GPAs than students without disabilities (3.00 compared to 3.19).

These statistics suggest that education is not equal, and a lack of accommodations could be a significant reason why.

At any rate, dropping out of school tends to follow you across the lifespan.

A 2017 study found that students who quit school in grades 9-12 were up to 400% more likely to be arrested, fired from a job, use illegal drugs, or have poor health by age 27. (That’s compared to students who did graduate from high school). They were 24 times more likely to experience four or more of these and other negative outcomes.

College degrees have lifelong consequences, too. In 2024, employees with a bachelor’s degree made an average of $613 more per week than workers with a high school diploma alone. That adds up over a lifetime of work. The unemployment rate for bachelor’s degree-holders was 2.5%, compared to 4.2% for workers with just a high school diploma (and 6.2% for people without one).

These personal outcomes have societal effects. Higher earnings creates a stronger tax base. Lower unemployment sometimes reduces crime. And a fairer society—one that lives up to its promises of equal access to education—will reduce the ambient level of suffering in our communities.

That just leaves one question: What can we do to improve access to accommodations across K12 and higher education?

4 Ways to Improve Access for Students at Every Level

To provide the learning conditions that work best for every student, we first need to know and understand those conditions. We can start by identifying disabilities, neurodivergence, and language barriers for each individual we teach.

Then we have to provide the supports students need—whether that’s assistive technology like TTS, in-class aides, or more choice among learning materials.

The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework can help us here. This set of educational guidelines helps teachers create individualized learning opportunities for every student they teach. It does so by providing options, so each student can build an education experience that works for their unique needs and talents.

Under the UDL framework, educators provide learning materials through multiple means of presentation. Instead of handing a sixth-grader a textbook, for example, you might provide the text plus an audiobook version plus a visual presentation of the material. Each student can consume the information in the way that works best for them.

But even with the UDL framework in place, we must still identify disabilities and other unique conditions within our student populace. And we must make accommodations available. We can accomplish these goals by pursuing the following four strategies:

1. Implement universal screening for learning and attention disorders in K-12 education.

The earlier we identify a student’s needs, the better—and it seems that many young students are falling through the cracks. In England, prior to the pandemic, 40% of people with learning disabilities weren’t diagnosed as children. Universal screening everywhere could reverse trends like that.

2. Invest in accessibility programs and disability services offices at all levels of education.

Once we identify student needs, we have to address them. Schools have entire departments devoted to this task but they tend to be underfunded.

In the U.S., IDEA requires the federal government to pay 40% of the costs of educating students with disabilities. In 2020, federal funds only covered 13% of that cost. That sort of thing must change if we plan to educate every student equally.

3. Provide more training for educators, administrators, and policymakers.

In a 2019 survey, less than 20% of teachers said they felt “very well prepared” to teach students with learning disabilities like dyslexia and ADHD. In a 2024 study, teachers showed a “particularly high willingness to provide accommodations” for students with autism—but “limited confidence” in their ability to teach these students effectively.

That latter study concluded that “adequate support and training is required to equip teachers with the tools and resources to teach students with autism well.” The same can likely be said for students with other disabilities as well. That is why administrators, who determine how funds are spent, are also trained and supported.

Finally, we must educate policymakers on the importance of accommodations in classrooms, since so much of the funding needed to address a broad spectrum of learning challenges must be allocated by state and federal legislatures.

4. Simplify—and normalize—processes surrounding accommodations.

As we noted earlier, college students say it’s too hard to request accommodations. Processes are unclear and mired in paperwork. Combine this complexity with the social stigmas surrounding such requests and it’s easy to see why students don’t get the help they need.

The solution is to simplify, on the one hand, and normalize on the other.

We must remove the stigma surrounding accommodations and make them easy to access. Again, UDL is a helpful tool for these tasks. The UDL guidelines make multiple means of presentation available for all students to choose from. This often involves assistive technologies—but because they are a familiar part of the classroom experience for everyone, the risk of stigma is smaller. And by making these tools freely available to any student who may choose to use them, we make them a lot easier to access.

Edtech for Bridging the Accommodations Gap

Free access to edtech is a big part of the solutions we outlined above. It’s not enough to make “assistive technology” available only to students with a documented disability. We can only build truly inclusive education systems by making “edtech” available to everyone who might benefit. And make no mistake: edtech and assistive technology often refer to the exact same tools.

Text to speech (TTS) is one such tool.

Automatic audio versions of text improve access for a wide range of students, including those with vision impairments, learning differences, attention disorders, language barriers, or a simple preference for listening.

Outdated and difficult-to-use text-to-speech tools, often found only in disability services offices, frequently feature monotonous, robotic voices. This antiquated approach is ineffective in bridging accessibility gaps.

ReadSpeaker’s TTS solutions use the latest AI voices, so they sound utterly human. They integrate directly into all common learning platforms, from learning management systems (LMS) to digital assessment apps and more. They’re device-agnostic.

In short, ReadSpeaker gives students the option to listen whenever they want, wherever they are.

WIth more than 200 lifelike voices and over 50 languages available, ReadSpeaker TTS solutions for education have something for everyone. They’re a pillar of any UDL approach because they instantly deliver multiple means of presentation for text-based learning content, including web content and documents of all types.

Universally accessible education depends on giving students options—and ReadSpeaker brings the option to listen to everyone.