Accommodation integrated technology to minimize the impact of disability on students’ assessment performance

There is growing interest in computerized systems to increase accessibility of assessments for students with disabilities. Technology offers an ideal platform for implementing Universal Design (UD) principles for assessment to better accommodate student diversity and support broad student participation. The goal of this SBIR project is to integrate Universal Design principles for assessment into the development and testing of Assess2Progress: an innovative, easy-to-use, and secure web-based system by which K-5th grade teachers can independently create assessments of any type in any subject area and deploy that assessment to one or more students with embedded text-to-speech functions, audio controls, and visual accommodations. During Phase I, we will accomplish three technical objectives. First, we will develop a fully functioning software prototype with tailored teacher and student user interfaces. Second, we will conduct feasibility testing with teachers who are likely purchasers and/or users of the end product with students with disabilities to examine the feasibility and potential value of the Assess2Progress product within authentic special education settings. The third objective of Phase I will be field testing with students and teachers to ensure the prototype functions as intended when used by K-5th grade teachers and their students with disabilities in the classroom setting.