"To be literate is to have status, respect and accommodation from others; to have skills in communication (verbal, written, sign, gestural or other language); and to have access to the information and technologies that make possible self-determined participation in the communication processes of one's communities and broader society."

Roeher Institute Literacy,
Disability and Communication: Making the Connection
Toronto: L'Institut Roeher Institute, 1999, p. vii

"Literacy is more than learning to read, write and spell proficiently. It is learning to enjoy words and stories when someone else is reading them. It is learning to love books and all the worlds that can be opened by books. It is a way of achieving social closeness through sharing literacy experiences with friends or classmates. It is finding out about the way things are in places we have never visited or in places that have never existed. If we understand that literacy is all of these things and more, we can also understand that everyone can achieve some degree of literacy if given opportunities and exposure.... The notions that children [and adults] are too physically, too cognitively or too communicatively disabled to benefit from experiences with written language are not supported by current emergent literacy research!"

Pat Miranda, Ph.D.
Quoted in: Peggy A. Locke and Roxanne Butterfield,
" Promoting Literacy for Individuals with Severe to Moderate Disabilities"
(CSUN 1999 Conference Proceedings)
http://www.dinf.org/csun_99/session0038.html