The education sector generally and assessment specifically should understand why accessibility is important. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ensures that students with disabilities are able to access appropriate educational opportunities. Psychometrics talks about construct-irrelevant variance in reference to how things we are not trying to assess might impact test results. Psychometrics calls those things “irrelevant.”
Employment law also addresses this topic. One of the foundational ideas of the Americans with Disabilities Act is that a disability should not disqualify someone from taking part in life or having a job. For examples, so long as they can perform the major functions of a job, employers are required to provide reasonable accommodations so that they can do the work.
Of course, there’s that old universal design idea that making things easier for people with disabilities makes them easier for everyone. It really can be win-win. Famously, curb cuts (i.e., the ramps now built into sidewalk at street corners, cutting through the regular curb) that were originally intended to help the disabled in wheel chairs turn out to help many many others. People with wheeled suitcases. People with rolling carts. People wearing high heels. People carrying bulky loads that make it hard to look down. Anyone with sore or stiff knees, such as those with injuries or just the wear and tear of age. This is such a clear example of accessibility enhancement that the whole idea is called the curb cut effect.
My own first real exposure to assistive technology was in the early 1990’s. The family of a friend of mine was involved in early version of voice dictation software. This was before Windows, back in the DOS world. My friend asked me to help her at assistive technology trade show, and I demonstrated this amazing program, Dragon Dictate. I could speak (not quite continuously) and it would type my words. I could use a whole DOS computer with it. Though expensive, this technology could enable people to work jobs they might not be able to, otherwise. They could make economic contributions, and support themselves in the process.
All of that is about accessibility. But all of that is the moral case, not the business case. That is about why it is good to help other people who might need just a little assistance. Right now, it seems that some look down on such a value.
This series on DEIA (i.e., disability, equity, inclusion and accommodation) is about why it is good for the assessment industry and our products. So, why is accessibility in our own practices good for our products?
Well, as much as the RTD Project talks about the importance of empathy and the practice of radical empathy, they are not easy. Truly understanding someone else’s perspective, understanding how their experiences give them different views and understandings than we ourselves have, is hard. It is work. It takes time, information and even instruction. We can try to imagine, but there is nothing like asking others to help us to understand something, and listening to experts who know more than we do. In assessment development work, we simply must understand the different perspectives of our test takers if we are going to be able to develop instruments that assessment at all accurately.
The law requires us to test all students—or virtually all students. Professional licensure exams must be available to all potential test takers—virtually regardless of disabilities. How can we develop assessments with valid uses and purposes if they do not work for such a significant portion of the test taking population. If we mis-measure the proficiencies of the disabled, how can tests that have any component of norm-based scoring or reporting—as so often enters the standard setting process, even when we try to keep it out—deliver accurate results of any test takers?
So, we need room on our teams and in our own organizations for the disabled. People whose own lived experiences face different constraints than I do will notice things that I might not. Test delivery platforms might operate different for them in ways I do not notice. Contexts for math problems might have assumptions that I take for granted, but others do not understand. And the perspective expanding conversations and lessons I get from learning from colleagues with some disabilities can make it easier for me to understand or imagine perspectives of people with other disabilities. If I let them, they can get me out of my own perspective into a more open-minded space of empathy. They can help me to better ensure that the instrument in front of me is more focused on what it is supposed to assess.
Disability is just another dimension of diversity—or a bunch of different dimensions. The relatively minor efforts to make our workplaces and workflows accessible to people with disabilities enhances the effectiveness of our teams and our products just like the inclusions of other dimensions of diversity does. Perhaps it only gets its own letter in DEIA because some people too much limit the dimensions of diversity they consider.