A legal challenge is being developed regarding the failure of the
Educational testing Service to make its computerized tests available to
the blind in an accessible way. The challenge focuses on the "effective
communication" provision in the Americans with Disabilities Act. This
section requires not simply that information be accessible or an
alternative format provided but provided in such a way that it is as
effective as that provided to others. Computerized tests take
significantly less time to complete and the results are sent to schools in
a matter of hours rather than weeks with the paper version of the test.
The article below tells more.
kelly
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Friday, February 9, 2001
Blind Students Fault ETS for Not Making Computerized Tests
More Accessible
By ANDREA L. FOSTER
In the time it takes Jeremy Johansen, a senior at the
University of California at Santa Barbara, to get halfway
through the Graduate Record Examination, many of his
classmates have finished it and turned it in. That's because
Mr. Johansen, who is blind, opted to take the Braille version
of the test, while his classmates answer the same exam
questions on a computer.
He plods through the test with his limited knowledge of
Braille, and relies on a reader, whose role is to read the
questions and reading material aloud to him. Mr. Johansen
decided against taking the computerized version of the exam
after he found that the software provided to help him was
useless. "The only software they provide is ZoomText, and that
has no speech output -- it only has enlargement," he says of
the screen magnifier provided by the Educational Testing
Service.
Mr. Johansen and other members of the National Alliance of
Blind Students say they don't understand why E.T.S. doesn't
turn to widely available technology to create computerized
exams that blind students can take easily. So the alliance
plans to pressure E.T.S. to be more accommodating.
Last July the group adopted a joint resolution with the
American Council for the Blind that calls for an investigation
into the testing service's procedures and its plans for
serving blind students. The resolution also asks E.T.S. to
"implement specific actions that will ensure full and equal
access to all E.T.S. testing."
Kevin Gonzalez, an E.T.S. spokesman, says the testing service
responds to the needs of people with disabilities in many
ways. The company provides screen-magnification and
color-modification software for the visually impaired, pays
for readers or writers, allows a test-taker unlimited or extra
time, and provides private rooms for those who request them.
If no private room is available, the testing center will be
closed for everyone but the person with the disability, he
says.
The alliance is also urging the civil-rights office of U.S.
Department of Education to prohibit the testing service from
flagging exams that are given under modified conditions for
people with disabilities. E.T.S. announced Wednesday that it
would stop the practice on some of its own standardized tests,
including the G.R.E. But the policy change does not apply to
tests that E.T.S. administers for the College Board, including
the SAT.
The shift settles a bias lawsuit brought against the testing
service in August 1999 by Mark Breimhorst, an aspiring
business-school student who has no hands. (See an article from
The Chronicle, February 8.)
April Shinholster, a graduate student at Western Michigan
University who is president of the blind-students alliance,
cheered Wednesday's announcement. She says flagged tests may
stigmatize disabled people and devalue their scores.
The alliance's assertive stance on admissions exams comes as
E.T.S. is increasingly replacing traditional paper exams with
computer-based tests. With some exceptions, E.T.S. administers
only the computerized version of the Graduate Record
Examination, the Graduate Management Admission Tests, the Test
of English as a Foreign Language, and parts of the Praxis
test. The Praxis test evaluates teachers' academic skills,
subject knowledge, and classroom performance.
Ms. Shinholster says the alliance is in the process of
drafting a letter to E.T.S. that fleshes out the alliance's
resolution. She says that the group wants to have a
cooperative relationship with the testing service.
Alliance members say their concerns include the following:
While nondisabled students take 30 minutes to an hour to
finish an E.T.S. computerized exam, it takes visually impaired
students as long as seven hours to complete the paper version.
Scores from Graduate Record Examinations completed on paper
take several weeks to reach colleges, while those completed on
the computer can reach colleges within hours.
Students should be able to use a device that converts digital
data to a Braille display, which is especially useful for
reading-comprehension or verbal-analogy questions.
Current test-preparation materials are not helpful to blind
students. "A lot of strategies in printed manuals don't
totally apply to working with the reader," Mr. Johansen says.
Mr. Johansen, who is treasurer of the alliance, also complains
that E.T.S. procedures are opaque. "When I started looking
into taking the Graduate Record Exam, it was hard to find
cohesive information about what I needed to do to set up
accommodations and register properly," he says. He adds that
he registered last October to take the test but didn't hear
back from E.T.S. until the second week of January.
He also says he didn't have an opportunity to meet his reader
before taking the exam. "We didn't have an understanding about
how best to work together, and because of that, time was spent
working out logistics instead of taking the test," he says.
Mr. Gonzalez of the E.T.S. says his company has been working
with the Education Department's civil-rights office to be more
responsive to the needs of visually impaired students who
choose to take computer-based tests.
_________________________________________________________________
|