Oregonians with disabilities got good news last week when the state announced they’d be eligible for federal education financial aid to take college and trade school classes. It’s a change in policy prompted in large part by the effort of state Rep. Sara Gelser, D-Corvallis.

Now students who graduate from high school with a modified or extended diploma will be able to apply for the same kind of aid sought by any student with a standard diploma. The change comes after Gelser met with federal Department of Education officials about the matter.

Modified diplomas are awarded to special education and other students who, even with assistance, have been unable to complete work at grade level. An extended diploma is available only to students in special education programs.

Yet many students with disabilities can successfully complete classes at their local community colleges and elsewhere, if they can pay for those classes. And while some students have been eligible for aid in the past — they had to pass a skills test or successfully pay for and earn six hours of credit to qualify — not all had. Meanwhile, the program through which they applied ended in July 2012.

Now help is available again.

The Oregon Department of Education’s Crystal Greene said Gelser and a staffer for U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., were able to persuade federal education officials that requirements for the modified diploma are both rigorous and consistent across the state.

The new eligibility means that the roughly 800 students in Oregon who graduated with modified diplomas last spring can apply for financial aid if they need it to pay for college or trade school courses. In addition, graduates who had been ineligible under the old rules will be eligible under the new ones.

People with intellectual disabilities face plenty of employment issues as it is. A survey conducted for Special Olympics in 2011-12 found that only a third of intellectually disabled adults held jobs and that the unemployment rate for the group was 21 percent, as opposed to 9 percent of the nondisabled workforce. Education can help change that, and now money will help some get it.