Slides from a presentation giving an overvies of the principles of designing and delivering electronic assessments that are designed with the diverse needs of learners in mind. This was a webinar given on 5th September 2012, one of the virtual sessions of the eAssessment Scotland 2012 conference.

1. Approaches to
Inclusive
eAssessment
David Sloan
5th September 2012
eAssessment Scotland
2012
http://www.flickr.com/photos/purecaffeine/5399530443/

2. Today’s presentation
• The role of e-assessment in an inclusive
learning and teaching environment
– Primary focus is disability, but also relevant to
distance learners, mobile device use
• The learner perspective: creating an inclusive
assessment environment
• The teacher perspective: creating an inclusive
electronic assessment
• Focus on general principles and best practice
– No platform- or tool-specific information
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3. 1 MOTIVATION FOR INCLUSIVE E-
ASSESSMENT
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4. The inclusivity potential of e-
assessment
• Overcoming accessibility limitations of the
physical world
– Simulation
– Remote access via video or audio
• Flexibility of presentation of assessment
– Customisation of appearance and behaviour
– Reuse potential/maintenance over time
• Meeting organisational legal and social
responsibilities
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5. 2 ASSESSMENT ACCESSIBILITY FROM THE
LEARNER’S PERSPECTIVE
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6. Learner -- Accessibility
What does a learner with accessibility
needs require from an e-assessment?
1. An accessible assessment environment
2. Fairness in the nature of the assessment
instrument
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7. Making the assessment environment
accessible
• Physical accessibility of venue
• Accessibility of the assessment’s host
platform: appropriate accommodations
for a learner’s accessibility requirements
– Is the required assistive technology (AT) that
a learner needs available?
– Or can the learner use their own AT?
– Does the environment enable a learner to
make necessary adjustments to display or
input device behaviour?
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8. Fairness in nature of assessment
• A balance between pedagogic aims of the
assessment and sensory, physical and
cognitive demands placed on a learner
• For example, think carefully about
questions where the format demands:
– High visual acuity
– Colour perception
– Fine mouse control
– Reading text in a particular format
– Filling in a complex form
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9. 3 ACCESSIBILITY FROM THE TEACHER’S
PERSPECTIVE
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10. Teacher -- Accessibility
• Key principles:
– Anticipate and accommodate diversity in learner
needs
– Design each e-assessment to be as accessible as
possible
• Enabling an individual learner’s own assistive
technology to do its job
– Consider aggregating multiple assessment
methods to accommodate diverse needs
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11. Accessible Assessments
• For accessibility solutions to work as they
should, digital content must be designed in a
way that allows them to do so
• Basic principles (from W3C Web Accessibility
Initiative):
1. Allow people to perceive assessment content
2. Allow people to operate assessment content
3. Allow people to understand assessment content
4. Provide assessment content that is robust across
different environments
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12. Principle 1. Perceivable
• Provide alternatives to graphical content for people
who can’t see it:
– A text alternative for an image (the HTML alt attribute)
– A longer text description for a complex image such as a
graph
– Audio description for a video
• Make content easier to see
– Avoid low contrast text/background colour schemes
– Use animated content with care
• Provide alternatives for audio content for people
who can’t hear it:
– Captions (better) or transcript
– Signed translation (if possible)
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13. Principle 1. Perceivable
• Provide alternatives to textual content for
people who have difficulty reading or
processing it:
– Static images: photos, graphs, diagrams
– Video, animations
– Signed content
• Provide alternatives to audio content for
people who can hear it but have difficulty
understanding it
– Subtitles
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14. Principle 2. Operable
• Support keyboard operation
– All functionality accessible via the keyboard
– No keyboard ‘traps’
– Alternatives to drag-and-drop
• Give learners enough time to respond
– Be very careful about time-limits on requiring actions
• Support efficient navigation through the
assessment
– Clear links, headings, ‘skip links’
– Logically labelled and positioned form controls
– Be careful with “multiple multiple choice” questions
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15. Principle 3. Understandable
• Make sure content is comprehensible:
– Language appropriate to the target audience
– Changes in natural language identified
• Apply predictable design and behaviour
– Consistency in page layout, terminology, actions
• Give input assistance
– Help in providing correct input to forms (where
appropriate)
– Appropriate error handling
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16. Principle 4. Robust
• Provide content that is available and
usable across different browsing platforms
- legacy and future
– Valid HTML and CSS markup
– Using ‘accessibility-supported’ technology
• Watch out when copying content into an
assessment authoring tool from another
source
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17. Evaluating Assessment Accessibility
• Check principles of accessibility have been
met before piloting an e-assessment
• Act on results by amending the assessment
before use - and if you can’t…
• …try to deal with accessibility shortcomings
– Understand location, nature and impact
– Understand if you/a colleague can fix them or
whether it’s a vendor issue with the delivery
platform
– Developing and implementing a strategy for
dealing with shortcomings (short term
workaround, long term fix)
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18. Resources
• W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
(WCAG): http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag.php
• WebAIM - general advice on web
accessibility: http://www.webaim.org
• Techdis: Accessibility in e-Assessment:
http://www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/techdis/pages/detail/floatin
g_pages/Inclusive_E-Assessment
• Sheffield Hallam University: Accessible
Assessments:
http://www.shu.ac.uk/services/lti/accessibleassessments/
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19. THANKYOU!
email: dsloan@computing.dundee.ac.uk
twitter: @sloandr
blog: www.58sound.com
work: www.dmag.org.uk --- www.computing.dundee.ac.uk
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