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.


_________________________________________________________________


VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
To join or leave the list, send a message to
[log in to unmask]  In the body of the message, simply type
"subscribe vicug-l" or "unsubscribe vicug-l" without the quotations.
 VICUG-L is archived on the World Wide Web at
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html