TWYLA (Test What You Learned - Assessment): A Cloud-Based Cognitively Accessible Testing Extender For Special Needs Learning Apps

Mobile devices and cloud-based services are transforming the world we live in and bringing significant change to everyday technologies for those with and without disabilities. The explosion of Apps and mobile devices is revolutionizing the software industry as a whole and special education technology in particular as individuals with disabilities, families, and teachers are provided direct access to products which can be seamlessly installed to mobile devices. While each App offers engaging and often effective learning activities to students with cognitive disabilities, it is usually up to the teaching professional to determine how to assess student progress, as few of these Apps are research-based and contain integrated assessment components. Apps that do have an assessment component may still not have a cognitively "accessible" assessment interface as well as may not be assessing what is of interest to the teacher working with students with cognitive disabilities. In this project we will develop a powerful assessment system which can be coupled with any special needs App on a mobile device to allow special education teachers, as well as special needs App developers, to seamlessly integrate a cognitively accessible testing component into their App learning environment.