Teleconference 3: April 29, 2002

Issues and Opportunities for Students with Disabilities in Technology Based Assessments

Challenges

Despite the potential advantages offered by technology-based assessments, there remain several challenges. First of all, the use of technology cannot take the place of content mastery. Hollenbeck, Tindal, Harniss, and Almond (1999) strongly caution that the use of a computer, in and of itself, does not improve the overall quality of student writing. They, and other researchers, continue to find significantly lower mean test scores for students with disabilities than for their peers without disabilities. Other challenges that must be overcome in order for technology-based assessments to be effective include: issues of equity and skill in computer use, added challenges for some students, technological challenges, security of online data, lack of expertise in designing accessible Web pages, and prohibitive development cost.

Issues of Equity and Skill in Computer Use

Concerns continue to exist in the area of equity, where questions are asked about whether the required use of computers for important tests puts some students at a disadvantage because of lack of access, use, or familiarity (Trotter, 2001). The gap in access to technology - sometimes referred to as the "Digital Divide" - is continuing to grow. According to Bolt and Crawford, authors of Digital Divide (2000, p. 98):

While over 80 percent of families with incomes of $100,000 or more have computers at home, only about 25 percent of those households with annual incomes under $30,000 have home access to computers. Demographically, this means that the digital revolution is in full swing in America's wealthy suburbs and affluent sections of cities and towns, while in some of our poorest areas, it is a phenomenon that is at best heard about on television. The gap has widened considerably for computer ownership among racial minorities when compared with European-Americans. In the context of the overall racial digital divide, a low-income European-America child is three times more likely to have internet access than his or her African-American counterpart, and four times as likely as a Latino family in the same socioeconomic category.

Added Challenges for Some Students

Some research questions whether the medium of test presentation affects the comparability of the tasks students are being asked to complete. Here are some findings that show added difficulty for some students.

* Computer-based testing places more demands on certain skills such as typing, using multiple screens to recall a passage, mouse navigation, and the use of key combinations (Bennett, 1999; Ommerborn & Schuemer, 2001).

* Some people become more fatigued when reading text on a computer screen than on paper (Mourant, Lakshmanan & Chantadisai, 1981).

* Long passages may be more difficult to read on computer screen (Haas & Hayes, 1986).

* The inability to see an entire problem on screen at one time is challenging because some items require scrolling horizontally and vertically to get an entire graphic on the page (Hollenbeck, Tindal, Harniss, & Almond, 1999).

* Few teachers use computers in math instruction, or spreadsheets, so students do not know how to "think on the monitor" (Trotter, 2001).

* Graphic user surfaces present considerable obstacles to students with visual impairments (Ommerborn & Schuemer, 2001).

Technological Challenges

Computers and the Internet do not always work the way we want them to. The word "crash" has taken on a whole new meaning in our technology-oriented world. An issue brief of the National Governor's Association listed some of the problems: "testing sessions may be interrupted, proceed so slowly as to interfere with student performance, or encounter difficulties in machine operation or telecommunications that cause data to be lost entirely. Unlike a paper-and-pencil testing system, keeping a computerized system functioning requires significant technical expertise, which many schools lack" (p. 7). Burk (1999) argued, "Computerized testing for students with disabilities is viable but only with appropriate equipment, staff preparation, and student preparation" (p. 6). Some researchers, like Hamilton, Klein, and Lorie (2001), question whether an infrastructure currently exists that can support the use of computers by large numbers of students. They also question the quality of the hardware, especially with our constant evolution of technology, and whether there is sufficient training for staff who must help with administration and technological difficulties that may be encountered. Also, the test program may be device-dependent; for example, there may be a difference in contrast between monitors and speed of the computer. A test presented online may default to the computer's font, print size, and background color. Graphics may become distorted on small screens, reducing standardization of the assessment presentation.

A constant challenge is ongoing entry of new Web browsers and new versions of existing browsers. In addition, Web tools such as HTML and document converters are constantly being developed and modified. Unfortunately, several features may not be universally accessible and advancements in assistive technology are usually several steps behind new Internet components and tools. For example, using an eye pointing device may increase the time needed to position each eye pointing frame, leading to increased fatigue, boredom, and inattention by the test-taker (Haaf, Duncan, Skarakis-Doyle, Carew, & Kapitan, 1999).As technology-based assessments become a reality   across states and districts, it is important to ensure that the new technology either improves accessibility or is compatible with existing assistive computer technology.

Security of online data

Critics question whether online data are secure. In a report by the National Governor's Association (2002), security issues related to protecting test questions and ensuring the confidentiality of student data in a computerized system were compared to those encountered with conventional tests and were found to be conceptually similar. Differences were found in mechanisms to accomplish breaches and protect against them. For example, test questions and student data could be stolen from central servers or from local computers. This can be minimized through technical design that encrypts questions and student records and through the careful use of passwords.

Lack of ability to design accessible Web pages

According to WebAIM, (Web Accessibility in Mind, an initiative of the Center for Persons with Disabilities at Utah State University, 2001), there are 27.3 million people with disabilities who are limited in the ways they can use the Internet: "The saddest aspect of this fact is that the know-how and the technology to overcome these limitations already exist, but they are greatly under-utilized, mostly because Web developers simply do not know enough about the issue to design pages that are accessible to people with disabilities. Unfortunately, even some of the more informed Web developers minimize the importance of the issue, or even ignore the problem altogether" (p. 1).

Prohibitive Development Cost

Development expenses listed in a report by the National Govornor's Association (2002) include: "central hardware to deliver the test over the Internet, local telecommunications hardware, machines in schools for students to take the tests on, and test authoring and delivery software. Labor expenses include costs for entering questions into the testing software, assuring quality in the test's operation, extracting student records from the test database and translating the information into a form suitable for analysis, and servicing the technology that runs the system. There are also ongoing connection charges" (p. 7). The National Govornor's Association recommends that states form consortia, cooperative agreements, or buying pools in order to reduce the costs of "test questions, telecommunications equipment, computer hardware, testing software, and equipment maintenance" (p. 9).

These materials are excerpts from a draft NCEO report developed with support from NCS Pearson