Using Technology to Improve Testing Accommodations

As technology-based approaches become solutions of choice in the classroom, so they must also become solutions of choice for providing accessible assessments. By borrowing from the solutions provided by UDL in the classroom, we begin developing assessments that not only are accessible but employ the same technologies that students use in the classroom and in daily life.

The most common testing accommodation outside of altering test format (e.g. schedule or setting changes) is reading aloud test questions to the learner. The intent of this accommodation (when testing skills other than word reading) is to remove the barrier that text presents to many students (e.g. students with dyslexia or visual impairments). The problem with this accommodation is that it is typically administered in group settings of one reader with many students. In this environment, students are unlikely to request rereads due to peer pressure or embarrassment. Thus these students may still be at a disadvantage compared to students who are able to read independently. On the other hand, if students were provided with a technology supported reading environment, similar to the ones mentioned in the previous section, they would have independent access to the text and could read and reread passages at will.

Other accommodations, such as test magnification, use of a keyboard for response, and access to a bilingual dictionary, also can be provided by using technology in ways that are more user-friendly than can be done without their use. For example, in a study funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Martha Burk has shown that using computers to provide large print, extra spacing, and the use of sound was a better means to grant accommodations to students with some learning disabilities than the standard non-technological approaches.