No AI tool writes a 504 plan for you. The useful ones split the work in two: drafting the accommodation language and the letters around the meeting, which MagicSchool, Brisk Teaching and StaffDraft do, and delivering the accommodations once they are written, which Read&Write, Kami and Diffit do. The second half is where a plan either changes a student's day or sits in a folder, and it is the half most tool lists skip.
This is for the general education teacher, school counselor or 504 coordinator with a meeting on Thursday and a blank document open.
Why is this landing on your desk this fall?
Fall is when 504 referrals arrive. A student who scraped through last year without support hits a first round of unit tests, a parent brings in a diagnosis letter, and someone has to write the plan. Education Week published its explainer on the difference between the two documents on August 13, 2026, which is a fair sign of how often the question is being asked.
Here is the part that makes AI tempting. An IEP has a legally prescribed shape. A 504 plan does not. Section 504 reaches any student who, in the Department of Education's words, "has a physical or mental impairment which substantially limits one or more major life activities," with no list of 13 categories to check against. The regulations do not mandate a written plan at all: the Department of Education "encourages written plans that detail accommodations, including the time and place the student will receive services," and any district employing 15 or more people must name at least one Section 504 coordinator (K-12 Dive, February 19, 2025). Around 3 percent of students ages 3 to 21, about 1.6 million, were served only by Section 504 in 2020-21, according to the Civil Rights Data Collection reported in that same piece.
A document with no required format, written under time pressure, by staff who were not trained to write it. That is exactly the gap a drafting tool walks into, and exactly why the draft needs reading twice.
What can AI do for a 504 plan, and what can it not?
It can do four things: turn a described barrier into accommodation wording that a teacher can act on, suggest accommodations you had not considered, rewrite the plan into a one-page summary for the staff who have to follow it, and draft the parent notification in plain language.
It cannot decide eligibility. That is a team decision resting on an evaluation, and Section 504 makes the school responsible for identifying and evaluating the student (Department of Education). It also should not hold the student's name. Every tool below can do its job from a description of the barrier with no identifying detail attached, which is the single habit that keeps this work safe.
Outsource the drafting. Keep the judgment.
Which tool fits which part of the 504 job?
| Tool | The job it does | Strengths | Limitations | Price and free tier (checked October 6, 2026) | Privacy considerations |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MagicSchool | Drafts plan language and suggests accommodations | Names a 504 Plan Generator and an Accommodation Suggestion Generator among its teacher tools | Free tier's generation cap is not published | Free plan lists 80+ teacher tools; Plus $8.33 per user per month billed annually, $12.99 monthly | Vendor states student data is never sold or used to train its models and is stored in the United States |
| Brisk Teaching | Works on the draft where it already lives, in Google Docs | Free tier is unlimited for its 20+ tools; runs as a browser extension | Runs on whatever document is open, including ones it should not | Free for teachers; school and district tiers are quote-only | Directory record reads Unknown for hosting, age and FERPA |
| StaffDraft | Drafts the parent letter and the staff message | Staff-only by design; does not retain drafts after processing | 10 drafts a month free; UK-first language, US mode available | Free plan 10 drafts a month; paid from GBP 6 a month | Hosted in the United Kingdom; staff tool, minimum age 18 |
| Diffit | Delivers a reading-level accommodation | Rewrites any text to a chosen level in minutes | Free tier only keeps 90 days of what you make | Free plan; school plan is a flat annual fee by enrollment, no public figure | Directory record reads Unknown for hosting, age and FERPA |
| Read&Write | Delivers read-aloud, dictation and focus accommodations | Covers the accommodations most often written into a plan, in one extension | Student seats are a paid purchase | Free for K-12 teachers; paid plans from $2.75 per seat | Now sold under the Everway brand; check the current terms, not the old ones |
| Kami | Delivers accommodations on the worksheet itself | Voice typing, accessibility fonts and captions are all free | Read Aloud sits on the paid tiers | Basic free; Teacher $149, Pro $12 a month or $85 a year | Directory record states US hosting and FERPA, COPPA and GDPR yes, no minimum age |
How was this list built?
The pool was the 29 tools in the aieducator.tools directory carrying the Special Education and Accessibility category, plus the drafting tools whose records mention Section 504, IEPs or accommodations. Nobody paid to appear here. Every price was read on the vendor's own page on October 6, 2026.
Three tools were left out deliberately. Wayground is the only directory record whose feature list names "Embedded differentiation and accommodations," alongside a dyslexia font and read-aloud, which should put it on this list; its own site blocks automated checks, so its pricing and feature claims could not be verified at source today and it is named here as unverified rather than ranked. FrenalyticsEDU and EduTestPro both mention 504 plans in their records and publish no prices. Two tools that come up in searches for this job, CK-12's 504 Planner and Flint's 504 plan generator, are not in the directory at all.
Which four questions pick the tool for you?
1. Does the student's name need to leave the room? If the answer is no, and it almost always is, describe the barrier instead: "a seventh grader who loses track of multi-step directions." Every tool here works from that.
2. Is the bottleneck the wording or the delivery? If you know what the student needs and cannot phrase it, you want MagicSchool or Brisk. If the plan is written and nothing has changed in the classroom, you want Read&Write, Kami or Diffit.
3. Does the accommodation have to run on the student's screen? Read-aloud, dictation and extended-text support are features with price tags. Check which tier carries the one your plan promises before you promise it.
4. Who is allowed to click? StaffDraft is an adult tool, minimum age 18. Kami's record lists no minimum age and US hosting. That difference decides whether students touch the tool at all.
MagicSchool is the best fit for drafting the plan language
MagicSchool lists both a 504 Plan Generator and an Accommodation Suggestion Generator among its teacher tools, which makes it the only tool in this group built explicitly for the document. It holds a 4.74 rating from 19 reviews in the directory and carries an independent 9ine security assessment.
Watch out for: the free plan advertises "80+ teacher tools" but not a generation limit, while "Unlimited generations" is sold as a Plus feature. If you are drafting several plans in a week, expect to meet a ceiling the pricing page does not name.
Pricing: free plan at $0; Plus at $8.33 per user per month billed annually, or $12.99 billed monthly; Enterprise by quote (pricing, checked October 6, 2026).
Safety: MagicSchool states that "Student data is never sold or used to train AI models, and it's stored securely in the United States," and claims compliance with FERPA, COPPA, GDPR and SOC 2 Type II. That is the vendor's statement, not a verdict. Our directory record still reads Unknown for minimum age, hosting and FERPA, and your district's data agreement is the document that settles it.
Brisk Teaching is the best fit for a draft that already exists
Brisk is a Chrome and Edge extension that works inside Google Docs, Slides, YouTube and your LMS, which matters because a half-written 504 plan is usually already a Doc. The free tier gives teachers 20-plus tools with unlimited usage, in 50-plus languages. Directory rating 4.77 from 35 reviews, with a 9ine assessment.
Watch out for: an extension sees the document in front of it. A teacher who opens Brisk on a tab holding a student's evaluation report has moved identifying data without deciding to. The free plan also caps uploads for batch feedback, where the paid tiers state no limit.
Pricing: free for teachers; Premium and Intelligence tiers are custom-priced (plans, checked October 6, 2026).
Safety: the plans page states no minimum age or hosting location, and our directory record reads Unknown for FERPA, COPPA and hosting. Treat it as a staff tool on staff documents and the question does not arise.
StaffDraft is the best fit for the letter home
The 504 process generates more correspondence than plan text: the notification, the meeting invitation, the message to five teachers explaining what changes on Monday. StaffDraft is built for exactly that, with US and UK language modes, dictation, handwritten note upload and safeguarding escalation detection.
Watch out for: 10 drafts a month on the free plan, which a single 504 cycle can eat. Its own site does not mention 504 plans at all, although our directory record does, so you are applying a general education-writing tool to the job rather than buying a 504 feature.
Pricing: free plan at 10 drafts a month; paid plans from GBP 6 a month for individuals (staffdraft.ai, checked October 6, 2026).
Safety: the vendor states "No personal data is required for normal use of StaffDraft" and that "Drafts are not retained after processing. Always remove sensitive data before generating." Our record lists UK data hosting, GDPR yes, and a minimum age of 18, which makes it a staff-only tool. US districts should ask where the processing happens before sending anything about a named student, which you should not be doing anyway.
Diffit is the best fit for delivering a reading-level accommodation
"Text at the student's reading level" is one of the most common lines in a 504 plan and one of the least often delivered, because nobody has time to rewrite the handout. Diffit does that rewrite from a topic, a text or a link, and the output prints. Directory rating 4.20 from 5 reviews.
Watch out for: the free plan only lets you "access content made in the last 90 days," so the differentiated set you built in September is gone by Christmas unless you downloaded it. Alignment to standards, skills, MTSS tiers and DOK levels is a paid feature, and MTSS tiers are what a 504 team often wants the material tagged against.
Pricing: free plan; Diffit for Schools is "a flat-rate annual subscription, tiered based on student enrollment" with no public figure, so treat school pricing as quote-only (pricing, checked October 6, 2026).
Safety: our directory record reads Unknown for hosting, minimum age and FERPA. Use it on the text, not on student work, and the exposure stays at zero.
Read&Write is the best fit for the accommodations themselves
If a plan promises read-aloud, dictation or reduced visual distraction, this is the tool that delivers all three. Read&Write offers text-to-speech that "Reads text aloud with natural-sounding voices while highlighting words," a Screenshot Reader that "Reads text from images, PDFs, or inaccessible documents," speech-to-text so students can "dictate text naturally - no typing required," word prediction, picture and text dictionaries, a simplify function, and screen masking that creates "a reading spotlight to improve focus and reduce visual distractions."
Watch out for: a name change. The directory record and most older write-ups point at texthelp.com, which now redirects to Everway, and the product documentation lives there. Anyone checking terms against a two-year-old link is reading the wrong page.
Pricing: "Teachers get free access. We offer free access to Read&Write to K-12 teachers," with institutional "Paid plans from $2.75 per seat" (product page, checked October 6, 2026). Teacher access free, student seats paid.
Safety: our directory record reads Unknown for hosting, minimum age and FERPA, and carries a 9ine assessment. Because the extension reads whatever is on screen for the student, the district rather than the teacher should approve the install.
Kami is the best fit for accommodations on the worksheet
Kami annotates PDFs, which is where most classroom work now lands, and it puts several accommodations inside the document itself. The free Basic plan includes voice typing, accessibility fonts, a multilingual dictionary, captions for audio and video, and 10-plus tools, with Drive and OneDrive integration. Directory rating 5.00 from 2 reviews.
Watch out for: Read Aloud is on the paid tiers, as are Translate, predictive text and the AI understand tools. A plan that specifies text read aloud and a school that bought nothing are not compatible, and voice typing being free is small comfort to a student whose accommodation is the other one.
Pricing: Basic free; Teacher $149; Pro $12 a month or $85 a year; Work $25 a month or $220 a year; school and district pricing by quote (pricing, checked October 6, 2026).
Safety: the strongest record in this group. Ours lists US data hosting, FERPA yes, COPPA yes, GDPR yes, no minimum age, and a 9ine assessment.
What about Khanmigo, ChatGPT, NotebookLM, Quizlet and Wayground?
Khanmigo tutors students and preps lessons; it is not a document tool, and nothing in it is built for a plan. ChatGPT will produce a 504 plan on request, confidently, and it is the one place where the no-names rule gets broken most often, so decide what your district's agreement permits before you open it. NotebookLM summarizes documents you upload, which is the wrong direction of travel for a student record. Quizlet is study practice and has no part in this job. Wayground is the one that should be here: its directory record names embedded accommodations, a dyslexia font and read-aloud, but its site blocked verification today, so treat those features as unconfirmed until you see them in your own account.
What does a 504 draft look like when AI writes the first version?
A worked sequence, for a seventh grader with ADHD whose meeting is Thursday. No name goes into any tool.
1. Describe the barrier, not the student. Paste something like: "Seventh grade student, general education, loses track of multi-step written directions and runs out of time on unit tests of 30 or more items. Reads on grade level. No current plan." That sentence, with the identity stripped out, is the thing worth keeping and reusing.
2. Generate accommodation options, then cut them. MagicSchool's accommodation generator will return more than the student needs. A plan with 12 accommodations nobody monitors is weaker than one with four that happen. Pick the four you can name a person and a time for.
3. Make the wording specific enough to follow. "Extended time" is not actionable. "Up to 1.5x on unit tests of 30 or more items, taken in the resource room, arranged by the test proctor" is, and it matches what the Department encourages a written plan to carry: the accommodation, the time and the place.
4. Write the two documents the plan needs to work. The one-page staff summary, which is the only part most teachers will read, and the parent notification in plain language. Brisk does the first inside the Doc; StaffDraft does the second.
5. Check the delivery exists before the meeting. If the draft says read-aloud, confirm which tool in your building provides it and whether your license includes it. This is the step that separates a plan from a promise.
What did checking the directory show?
Pulled from the aieducator.tools public API on October 6, 2026, across all 138 listed tools:
- 3 of 138 records mention Section 504 anywhere in their text: StaffDraft, EduTestPro and FrenalyticsEDU. Not one of them is primarily a 504 tool.
- 1 of 138 names accommodations in its feature list: Wayground.
- 29 of 138 carry the Special Education and Accessibility category, and 5 hold it as their primary category.
- 45 of 138 state Unknown for minimum user age, 45 for data hosting location, and 45 for FERPA position. 38 state FERPA yes.
- 36 of 138 carry an independent 9ine security assessment.
Those are our records of what vendors publish, not audits. The pattern is the finding: an education AI market of 138 tools has built almost nothing for the plan that covers roughly 1.6 million American students, and nearly a third of it does not say how old a user has to be.
What should never go into one of these tools?
The student's name, date of birth, student ID, address, parent contact details, diagnosis as written on a medical letter, or any evaluation document. The Department of Education treats information from education records that could identify a student as protected, and a general AI chat tool is not covered by your district's agreements unless someone signed one.
Two practical rules. First, write from the barrier, as in the worked example above. Second, before any tool touches anything about a named student, check that your district has a signed data privacy agreement with that vendor, and that the vendor's terms match the version you read, which for Read&Write now means the Everway terms rather than the old Texthelp pages. Our FERPA tools shortlist covers the tools that work without a student account at all.
How is a 504 plan different from an IEP, for tool purposes?
An IEP delivers specialized instruction and modifies the curriculum. A 504 plan delivers accommodations inside the general education curriculum and changes none of the content. Education Week puts it as IEPs including "the same types of accommodations, but they also modify" the course itself.
For tools, that difference is everything. An IEP needs goal banks and progress data, which is a different software category: our AI tools for IEP writing list covers it. A 504 plan needs accommodation wording and classroom delivery, which is why a reading-level tool and a text-to-speech extension sit alongside the drafting tools here. If the student also needs the reading itself supported, our tools for students with dyslexia list goes deeper, and AI tools for school counselors covers the coordinator side of the job.
The bottom line
Start with MagicSchool for the plan language, Brisk for the draft already in your Docs, and StaffDraft for the letter home. Then spend the rest of your attention on the half everyone skips: Read&Write for read-aloud and dictation, Kami for the worksheet, Diffit for reading level, and a check that your building actually owns the feature your plan promises.
The plan is not the deliverable. Thursday's meeting ends, the document gets filed, and on Monday a student either gets the test read to them or does not.
Dan Fitzpatrick is The AI Educator, a Forbes contributor and the founder of AI Educator Tools.
