Last updated on 1 October 2026
The PAP arrived in your locker at the end of September. Three slightly dry lines: adapted media, simplified instructions, authorised text-to-speech. You can see the intention. What is missing is the instructions for use for Monday, with a pile of sheets already photocopied and not an hour off to take everything back by hand.
It is for this very moment that I wrote AI and pupils with special needs: adapt your supports for DYS. A practical guide for primary and middle school teachers, AESH and anyone who wants to make their documents more accessible with the help of AI. Without impoverishing the course, and keeping student data well protected from mainstream AI.
Table of Contents
What is this guide on AI and DYS students, in concrete terms?
About sixty pages, ten short chapters. Each starts from a situation you know (a text that is too dense, a guideline that loses half the class, a handbook page that is photographed incorrectly) and ends with something that can be used immediately: a method, a prompt to copy, a checklist.
The book extends the collection started with 20 AI Tools Tested in Classroom for Beginner School Teacher. Same way of working, with a difference in size: it talks less about teacher productivity than about students’ access to the course. The rule that guides everything else is in one line, and I often repeat it in the book: we start from the observed need, never from the fashionable tool.
Simplify a text for a student dys without emptying the course
This is the heart of the book. Ask an AI to "simplify this text" and it will do so, in its own way. I saw AI transform ‘because pressure increases, volume decreases’ into ‘pressure increases, then volume decreases’. Two words less. All physics is gone with it.
To avoid this kind of damage, I propose to work in three layers:
- the Disciplinary Core First : you list what is not moving (notions, dates, terms to learn, cause and effect links) and you explicitly give it to AI;
- the language around then : short sentences, pronouns replaced by their referent, one idea per paragraph. This is where AI really works;
- some support to finish : a mini-glossary of no more than five words, a question of identification, possibly an audio version.
The prompt provided obliges the AI to protect the terms you have named, and then to signal itself the passages where it has hesitated. So, you reread what she points to you instead of looking for the mistake blindly. For a literary text, on the other hand, I advise not to rewrite at all and to accompany the work.
Instructions, layout, audio: the other construction sites of the book
Instructions cut into visible actions
“Analyze this document justifying your answer.” Six words, and at least five mental operations that are not reported to the student. Chapter 3 shows how to divide this kind of instruction into steps that start with a verb, without slipping any hint that would blow the answer. AIs have an unfortunate tendency to help too much.
An airy card rather than a Christmas tree
Line spacing, line length, left alignment, white between blocks. Nothing spectacular. The chapter also gives an update on the so-called dyslexic fonts: To date, research shows no measurable gain on reading, it is spacing that matters. I warn you, it is the passage that risks grinding a few teeth in the teachers’ room (I had already dug the question in my school font guide). For the fitness itself, DysFacile does the job very well, for free and without an account.
An audio version that really helps
A summary voice reads everything it is given, including page numbers and footnotes. Chapter 5 therefore explains how to clean the text before entrusting it to it, and then which tool to choose: Digispeech for a fast MP3, DocsToAudio for an entire document (with a reservation on the data). The research cited remains cautious about the effect of speech synthesis, which is real but modest: we test with the student before generalising.
This is followed by the manual page to be moved to the OCR and the evaluation to be adapted without changing what you measure.
Student data, the red thread
There is a cruel paradox in this subject. The students for whom AI can help you the most are also those with the most sensitive documents: PAP, PPS, balance sheets, personal copies. The book translates the Framework for the use of AI in education and the CNIL FAQs into a three-colour code, to quickly decide what to stick in a consumer AI.
Nothing I propose asks for student data to be sent there. AI does not need to know that it is Léa to help you air out a text.
Who this book is for, and what it won’t do
It is aimed at school teachers, middle school teachers, AESH, RASED and trainers. No need to be comfortable with AI. Chapter 9 proposes an adaptation circuit in 15 minutes, which the narrative of the end takes place for good: on a Wednesday evening, a text on the water cycle, three students picking up on the cobblestones, and an AI that writes ‘water rises in the sky’. This is honestly my favourite passage: it shows what the proofreading catches before the error settles for the year.
Let us be clear about the limits, that said:
- it is not a medical book, it does not make any diagnosis and does not replace either the PAP, the PPS or the opinion of the professionals who follow the student;
- reading and writing occupy most of the pages, dyscalculia and dyspraxia are tackled more quickly;
- the regulatory framework cited is French, colleagues from Belgium, Switzerland or Quebec will have to transpose this part;
Frequently asked questions about the book
Do I need a Kindle e-reader to read it?
No, no. The free Kindle app works on phone, tablet and computer. Premium subscribers receive a PDF version, more convenient for printing prompts.
Do prompts work with ChatGPT, Mistral or Gemini?
Yeah, yeah. They are written for any general assistant, including an institutional assistant. You replace what is in square brackets, and you always reread the result.
Can these methods be applied without AI?
In large part, yes. The layout, the browser reading mode or the cutting of the instructions do not require any generative model.
How to get the guide: Kindle or Premium Subscription
The book is available on Amazon in Kindle format: AI and pupils with special needs: adapt your supports for DYS.
If you are a Premium subscriber of La Lettre des Outils Tice, you can download it for free as a PDF, it is one of your advantages. Not yet subscribed? Everything is explained on the page of the Premium Subscription.
And if you had to keep only one piece of advice, it would be the one on which the book closes: Take a single support that you will distribute this week, lift a single obstacle, and watch what changes for the student. The rest will come.
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