Active Support

A person-centred model of support that enables people with intellectual disabilities, including those with severe and profound disabilities, to participate meaningfully in everyday activities and relationships. Active support involves providing graded levels of assistance — from full physical guidance to verbal prompts to standby support — tailored to each individual's current abilities, with the goal of maximising engagement and independence rather than doing things for the person. In the context of co-design and accessibility research, active support principles are applied to ensure that people with severe intellectual disabilities can contribute to technology design processes that would otherwise exclude them, by having trained support workers facilitate their participation through structured, ability-focused assistance.