The opinion of people with intellectual disabilities (ID) and communication difficulties can be challenging to capture. Pictorial support to enable communication, such as the methodological framework Talking Mats^TM has been successful to solicit the views of both adults and young people with ID (Murphy & Cameron, 2008). We believe that a constructionist way of thinking supports the idea of listening to children and trying to understand their thoughts, likes, fears, hopes, and problems, with the goal of forming a partnership. The process of guided participation, as presented by Rogoff (2003), involves children engaging in communication and acquiring knowledge through close collaboration with their peers and surroundings. This process views children as active and capable agents of change, as described by Rogoff (2003), Tomasello (2013) and Vygotsky et al. (1978).

According to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, (CRPD), all children have the right to express their views and the views shall be given due weight. The children shall be provided with the opportunity to express their views in accordance with their age and maturity. To provide all children to express their views, also those with ID and communication difficulties, environmental support and adaptations are needed.

It is important to carefully consider the challenges that individuals with ID may face when expressing their views and opinions and to use strategies to support their participation and ensure that their perspectives are included and valued. Many individuals with ID and communication difficulties need Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) to understand and to be understood (Beukelman, 2020). Using interviews and questionnaires developed for the general population is often complicated for individuals with ID and communication difficulties (Santoro et al., 2022). The addition of pictures in conversations, interviews, and questionnaires can support cognitive and communication difficulties as well as executive functions and working memory (Boström et al., 2016). Resources for pictorial support facilitate comprehension and supports expression and Talking Mats^TM has been widely used together with people affected by communication difficulties for both research and clinical purposes (i.e. Breeze, 2021; Stans et al., 2019).

Research supporting literacy interventions for individuals with different diagnoses and for all ages has shown promising results indicating that everyone should be given the opportunity to get a literacy education (Yorke et al., 2021). The enjoyment of reading and its positive relationship to reading ability has been well researched among students with typical development (e.g., Rogiers et al., 2020; Smith et al., 2012), but not in children with ID. The conclusion cannot be drawn that the simple fact of enjoying reading leads to increased literacy skills for neither students with typical development nor students with ID. Research in comparing children´s perspective have mostly been focusing on participation and goal setting and in comparison with proxy raters (Stans et al., 2009). The children´s views compared to corresponding test results is sparse.

In the current study, we interviewed students with ID in Swedish special needs schools. They all attended a reading intervention with digital apps and were interviewed before and after the intervention about their own communication and reading. The overall aim was to determine the relationship between students’ own views and their corresponding formal test results on speech sound production and word reading ability.

The study posed two research questions: (1) What are the students' own views of their speech and reading activities? And (2) Is there a positive correlation between the students' views of their speech and their speech sound production, and between their views on reading and their word reading ability?

A total of 116 students (65 boys and 51 girls) with ages ranging from 7 to 21 years old took part in this study. All the students met the inclusion criteria which were: (1) intellectual disability (2) need for AAC to understand and express themselves, and (3) inability to decode words independently and identify a maximum of 20 sight words. This study used the pictorial framework Talking MatsTM to enable students with ID and communication difficulties to share their views on speech and reading activities. The process includes identifying a topic, discussing related options, and using a visual scale to indicate views or feelings. A practice mat with simple questions about animals was used to validate students' understanding of the method. The remaining students who completed the practice mat were asked questions about their views on communication and reading activities. The three-point visual scale with pictures of facial expressions representing “like”, “neutral/in between” and “dislike” was transformed into a numbered ordinal scale. In the comparison between students self-rating and the test results on speech sound production and word reading, we focused on four questions related to speech (merged into one variable, Speech) and three questions related to increased difficulty in reading ability (merged into one variable, Reading activities). For assessing speech ability, a phonological test (Assessment of phonology, Frylmark) was used. The speech was transcribed and calculated as percentage phonemes correct on 138 phonemes. Reliability was excellent, with a high intraclass correlation coefficient of .997 and substantial agreement as indicated by a Cohens Kappa of .78. Two reading tests, OS 64 and OLAF were used to assess reading ability. Both tests were shortened for the present study, with OS 64 reduced to 15 items and OLAF reduced to 13 items. In OS 64, participants were shown written words and asked to match them to pictures, while in OLAF, they were shown pictures and asked to match them to written words. The test procedures for OS 64 were adapted by using enlarged symbols for visibility. The dependent variable was the number of correct answers on both tests, with a good test-retest reliability of .780. We used descriptive statistics to analyse the interview responses. Additionally, Pearson's correlations were used to examine the relationship between students' perceptions of their speech and reading ability and their actual test results in speech sound production and reading ability.

The use of pictorial support was beneficial in enabling students with ID and communication difficulties to express their views and participate in the study. The students had positive views of their speech, with 64% having positive views towards talking to one person at a time, and 46% liking talking in groups. Many students (64%) answered positively about talking on the phone. However, less than half (43%) had positive views towards their speech being intelligible for others. The student’s views on reading activities were more varied, with 47% having positive views toward reading letters, 38% for reading words, and 26% for reading sentences. The results indicate that as the degree of difficulty in the activity increases, the students' ratings were less positive. The study found that there was a positive association between the students' views on their speech and their actual speech sound production, as well as their views on reading activities and their tested word reading ability. The correlation coefficients were calculated using Pearson's method, and were statistically significant, with small positive values of r(84) = .24, p < .05 for speech and r(104) = .21, p < .05 for reading. This indicates that the student’s views on their speech and reading abilities were in line with their actual abilities as measured by formal tests. The students had a basic understanding of their own speech sound production and word reading abilities, as reflected in their views on these activities. The study highlights the challenges of including students with intellectual disabilities in research but emphasizes the importance of following the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and including these students in research. To overcome these challenges, the study suggests using pictorial support such as Talking Mats to facilitate communication and better understand the views of these students.

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