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Developmental and connectionist research describing a student's development of competent reading and writing skills commonly evokes the image of a normative ladder to literacy. Each rung of the ladder is believed to constitute certain sets of increasingly complex subskills. It is believed that cognitive mastery is required prior to the next step up the ladder. For people labeled with severe mental retardation, subskill mastery is often considered an intellectual impossibility. Hence, literacy is denied. In this research synthesis, however, we suggest that people with severe intellectual limitations can be understood as symbolic, and specific literacy skills can be supported. We use the term research synthesis to describe the textual weaving of two sources of understanding: (a) qualitative stories garnered from six students who were research participants and (b) published autobiographical and biographical stories by people with disabilities or their parents. These two sources of understanding underscore that a deeply caring relationship characterized by intimacy is of central importance when constructing as symbolic and literate a person labeled as having severe mental retardation.

Facilitated communication has been characterized as an alternative to speech that involves providing physical and emotional support to individuals with severe communication impairments as they type or point to letters or pictures (Biklen, 1993). The method has been described as relevant for individuals who cannot speak, whose speech is extremely limited (e.g., echolalic, comprising a few words) and who cannot point independently and reliably (Biklen, Morton, Gold, Berrigan, & Swaminathan, 1992; Crossley 1992). Qualitative and controlled studies of the method demonstrate its usefulness for some individuals and that facilitators may influence the communication of some individuals. This qualitative study of seven speech and language teachers and classroom teachers working with 17 students, focused on how and on what basis the teachers determined for themselves that the words typed were authored by their students and not by them, the facilitators. The teachers provided and described evidence for 13 of the 17 students of message passing skills (i.e., typing information not known to their facilitators that could be verified as accurate). The teachers noted that 3 of these 13 and 4 of the total 17 achieved some independent typing beyond typing their names and the date. Sixteen of the 17 students were judged by their teachers to have confirmed their typing/communication ability by virtue of other features: unique physical characteristics in typing or pointing, personal themes, recurring phrases, and stylistic qualities. These features appeared in their individual work but not in others, even though several shared facilitators. These findings suggest the potential value of a communication portfolio approach to documenting individuals' abilities to communicate with facilitation.