IEP accommodations: 64 classroom and testing supports, and the 15 modifications that belong in a different paragraph
Filter by the barrier a student meets, pick what answers it, say where each pick applies, and copy two drafts instead of one list: the accommodations for 34 CFR 300.320(a)(6) and the program modifications for 300.320(a)(4). The copy button refuses a draft where a support has nowhere to apply, and names it.
Grade level text provided in an audio or text to speech format, with the printed copy available to follow along.
Reading material provided at the student's independent reading level instead of at grade level.
Same category, same classroom, same student. One of them keeps the grade level expectation and one of them moves it, and IDEA writes the two in different paragraphs of the plan. That is the distinction this page exists for.
Filter by the barrier, pick the supports, then say where each one applies
Search the wording, narrow by category, by the barrier or by a common need group, and pick what fits. Every pick then asks the one question a catalog cannot answer for you: classroom instruction, the district assessment, the State assessment, or more than one. Nothing copies until each pick has an answer.
Filter the catalog, then pick what this student needs
79 of 79 shownBarrier first, then category. Work out what is blocking this student, then pick from the group that answers it. The four groups are the IRIS Center's. Common starting points for a conversation, not a prescription. 34 CFR 300.320(a)(6)(i) asks the IEP for individual appropriate accommodations, and 300.324(a)(1) makes the IEP Team consider this child's strengths, the parents' concerns, the evaluation results and the child's academic, developmental and functional needs. No diagnosis selects an accommodation.
Say where each one applies, then copy the two paragraphs apart
Pick from the catalog above and each one arrives here with the one question the catalog cannot answer: where does it apply. Classroom instruction, the district assessment, the State assessment, or more than one of them.
Individual appropriate accommodations, for 34 CFR 300.320(a)(6)
Nothing here yet. 34 CFR 300.320(a)(6)(i) asks the IEP for a statement of any individual appropriate accommodations that are necessary to measure the academic achievement and functional performance of the child on State and districtwide assessments consistent with section 612(a)(16) of the Act.
Program modifications and supports, for 34 CFR 300.320(a)(4)
Nothing here yet, and plenty of plans need nothing here. 34 CFR 300.320(a)(4) is where a statement of the program modifications or supports for school personnel belongs, in its own paragraph, away from the accommodations above.
This draft lives only in this open tab. The builder makes no request of its own, nothing is written to browser storage, and reloading the page clears it. The analytics on the page see which page was opened, never these fields. And it asks for no name, no identifier and no district, so there is nothing here to leak.
IEP accommodations vs modifications: the one distinction the whole page turns on
Teams mix these two up more often than any other pair in special education, and the mix up changes what a student is expected to learn.
An accommodation changes how
Understood.org states it plainly: accommodations are changes in how a student learns, and they remove barriers so students can learn the same material as their peers and meet the academic standards their State sets for each grade level.
The Center for Parent Information and Resources gives the example that settles most arguments: a student who has trouble writing gives answers orally, and is still expected to know the same material and answer the same questions as fully as everyone else.
The expectation did not move. That is the test.
A modification changes what
A modification is a change in what a student is taught or is expected to learn. The Center for Parent Information and Resources describes it as a change in what is being taught to or expected from the student, and gives making an assignment easier as its example.
Understood.org adds the consequence a team should say out loud in the meeting: students who are getting modifications are not being held to the same standards as other children in their grade. It also notes that accommodations appear in IEPs and in 504 plans, while modifications are generally only in IEPs.
This is not a stronger accommodation. It is a different decision.
The four categories, and why the barrier comes first
The categories are not filing cabinets. Each one answers a particular kind of barrier, which is why finding the barrier is the first move and not the second.
The IRIS Center at Vanderbilt groups accommodations into four categories: presentation, response, setting, and timing and scheduling. Its own module is explicit about the order. Identifying and selecting instructional and testing accommodations is the responsibility of the IEP team, and before the team can select an accommodation it must first identify the barrier affecting the student's academic performance.
A team starting from a list picks what it recognises. A team starting from the barrier picks what answers it, and can say why. The catalog above filters by barrier for that reason, and the barriers are written as what the student meets rather than as a label from the file.
Presentation
- Barrier
- The way the information is presented: in text, in a lecture or on video
Response
- Barrier
- The way the student must respond, by writing or by speech
Setting
- Barrier
- The setting itself, its noise level and its lighting
Timing and scheduling
- Barrier
- The timing of the work, the time of day and the length of the task
The 15 modifications are filed on the same four axes on purpose. The pair a team confuses sits on one axis: the audio version of the grade level book and the book at the student's own reading level are both presentation changes. Only the kind tag says which one left the grade level expectation standing.
Two paragraphs in the plan, not one list
This is the part a merged list breaks, and it breaks quietly: the plan keeps looking complete while a modification loses the fields IDEA attaches to it.
The accommodations have their own statement in the written plan. 34 CFR 300.320(a)(6)(i) requires:
A statement of any individual appropriate accommodations that are necessary to measure the academic achievement and functional performance of the child on State and districtwide assessments consistent with section 612(a)(16) of the Act.34 CFR 300.320(a)(6)(i), read from eCFR on 14 October 2026
The modifications have a different one. 300.320(a)(4) asks the IEP for a statement of the special education and related services and supplementary aids and services, based on peer-reviewed research to the extent practicable, and a statement of the program modifications or supports for school personnel that will be provided to enable the child to advance appropriately toward attaining the annual goals and to make progress in the general education curriculum.
Those are two different addresses, and the regulation keeps using them. 300.324(a)(3) brings the regular education teacher into the determination of supplementary aids and services, program modifications and support for school personnel consistent with 300.320(a)(4). Supplementary aids and services have their own definition in 300.42: supports provided in regular education classes and other settings so that children with disabilities can be educated with nondisabled children to the maximum extent appropriate.
Then comes the paragraph that makes a merged list expensive. 300.320(a)(7) requires the projected date for the beginning of the services and modifications described in (a)(4), and their anticipated frequency, location and duration. A modification written into the accommodations statement has no start date, no frequency, no location and no duration, in a plan that still reads as finished. That is why the tool above produces two blocks.
Where it applies is part of the accommodation
An accommodation with no setting is not a lighter accommodation. It is an instruction nobody can follow, and the regulation is specific about who decides.
34 CFR 300.160(a) requires a State to ensure that all children with disabilities are included in all general State and district-wide assessment programs, with appropriate accommodations and alternate assessments if necessary, as indicated in their respective IEPs. That closing clause is the job: the assessment system takes its instructions from the plan, so a support the plan has not placed is one the test administrator has no authority to give.
The second half surprises people. 300.160(b) requires the State, or the district in the case of a district-wide assessment, to develop guidelines for the provision of appropriate accommodations, and those guidelines must identify only those accommodations for each assessment that do not invalidate the score, and instruct IEP Teams to select only those.
Read that against a reading assessment. A student who reads grade level text through audio in every lesson is well served by it, and on an assessment of reading itself the audio hands over the thing being measured. The same logic covers a calculator on a computation assessment and a spell checker on a spelling assessment. Several items carry that caution, and your State's assessment manual is the authority on which of them it permits.
Where accommodations are not enough, the regulation has an answer, and it is not a modification squeezed into the accommodations list. 300.160(c) covers alternate assessments aligned with alternate academic achievement standards, for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities who cannot participate in regular assessments even with accommodations, and 300.320(a)(6)(ii) requires the plan to say why the child cannot participate in the regular assessment and why the particular alternate assessment selected is appropriate for the child.
Why there is no accommodation list for a diagnosis
The need group filter in the tool is there because that is how the question arrives. Here is what it is, and what it is not.
People arrive looking for an ADHD accommodations list, a dyslexia list, an autism list. Those lists circulate, they are useful as reading, and not one of them is a plan. 300.320(a)(6)(i) asks for individual appropriate accommodations, and the word individual is not decoration.
300.324(a)(1) says what the team works from: in developing each child's IEP the IEP Team must consider the strengths of the child, the concerns of the parents for enhancing the education of their child, the results of the initial or most recent evaluation of the child, and the academic, developmental and functional needs of the child. None of those four is a diagnosis.
IRIS says the same from the practice side: selecting the accommodations that will let a student access learning is the IEP team's responsibility, and the team identifies the barrier first. Two students with the same label meet different barriers. One cannot hold spoken steps in mind; the other hears them fine and cannot get a pen to produce legible writing at speed. One list serves them both badly.
So the need group narrows the reading, the barrier picks the support, and the team decides. That order is both the useful one and the lawful one.
Where a checklist stops working
The Checklist view above prints the picks as an IEP accommodations checklist, one line per support with its category, its kind and where it applies. One teacher with a printed checklist is fine. A caseload across nine buildings is a different problem, and it is not a wording problem.
At that size the questions change. Which version of this accommodation is in the signed plan. Who changed it, and when. Whether the adult administering the assessment on the day can see what the plan says without asking anyone. Whether an accommodation written for a State assessment is on that State's approved list. Whether the start date, frequency, location and duration that 300.320(a)(7) attaches to the modifications are filled in. Whether anybody can answer a State monitor about a plan written nineteen months ago.
A page with a checklist on it answers none of those, and neither does this one. That is the honest limit of a tool like this: it gets the wording right, keeps the two paragraphs apart and refuses a support with nowhere to apply. It cannot tell you what the signed document says.
If the wording was never your problem, the three reads below are where that starts.
Sources, read from the official text
Every regulation quoted above was read from the eCFR text of 34 CFR part 300 on 14 October 2026, section by section. Check them yourself before you rely on a paraphrase, including ours.
- Accommodations, program modifications and the dates attached to them: 34 CFR 300.320 on ecfr.gov
- What the IEP Team must consider: 34 CFR 300.324 on ecfr.gov
- Assessment participation, the accommodation guidelines and score validity: 34 CFR 300.160 on ecfr.gov
- Supplementary aids and services, defined: 34 CFR 300.42 on ecfr.gov
- The four categories and the barrier each answers: the IRIS Center, Accommodations module
- Accommodations change how, modifications change what: Understood.org on accommodations and modifications
- The plain definitions, and where adaptations are made: the Center for Parent Information and Resources
Nothing else here is a number. No price, no time saving, no guarantee and no statistic, and 34 CFR part 300 neither publishes a list of accommodations nor sets how many a plan should carry, so this page states neither.
If you are the one who has to make four hundred of these defensible
Then the wording was never your problem. Version history, the accommodation visible to the adult giving the assessment, the dates and frequency filled in, and an answer for a State monitor are. Fifteen minutes on a call beats another afternoon of cross checking plans. If you are one teacher with a checklist on your clipboard, you do not need us.
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