Accessibility plays a crucial role when it comes to designing exams. It provides you with a more precise evaluation of student learning and helps you better match your assessments with learning objectives. Exams designed with accessibility in mind can significantly improve the testing experience of students, whether or no they have a disability.
Considering the present scenario where institutes are digitizing more and more classroom activities- mainly tests and exams- accessibility is important now more than ever. Here we will outline some accessibility guidelines for the way online exams should be designed, conducted and proctored.
For remotely conducted online exams
Accessibility tool support
Students with disabilities today have numerous navigational tools to guide them through digital content. These range from screen-reader software to braille devices and more. Institutions can make these a mandatory inclusion for every online exam they conduct.
Visual aids
Visually impaired students must also be kept in mind when designing online tests. Large fonts, spaced out letters, minimum text, and high-contrast color schemes can simplify their testing experience. As Dan Bowen, Education Solution Specialist, rightly says, “Keep in mind that accessibility includes not just physically-impaired students, but also those with issues like dyslexia.”
Sensory aids
Many online exams incorporate sensory stimuli like videos and images (diagrams, flow charts, etc) for their students to achieve specific learning objectives. Teachers can provide alt-text for images and transcripts for videos to help students with impaired hearing. Similarly, visually challenged students can be provided with an audio description of images and things playing in a video.
Accessibility for Proctoring software
Proctortrack leads the race in accessibility compliance as far as proctoring solutions go. Here’s how institutions can implement Proctortrack’s student agnostic approach to make online exams more accessible for test-takers.
- Screen Reader Compatible: OS-level narrators or screen-readers, JAWS, NVDA, Chrome Vox
- Text alternatives for all non-text content as well as all links and forms.
- The contrast ratio for buttons and switches is above 4.5:1 to aid visually impaired test-takers
- The Proctortrak flow for all users can be Accessible by keyboard only
- Demo Videos and Guidance Gifs on the app have descriptions and also have captions.
- Internal Accessibility assessment is performed every six months.
- Introduction of “Skip-to content” switch on Proctortrack Dashboard for ease of use with Screen readers.
- Proctortrack tests its flow with various levels of color-blindness to ensure all features are accessible.
- Sequenced flow for all webpages and steps on the Desktop app.
- Chat widget, sequencing, and keyboard-only approach for instant troubleshooting.
About Proctortrack
Proctortrack by Verificient is an academic integrity platform for personalized learning. Proctortrack offers the world’s most advanced AI-based automated proctoring solution using continuous identity verification to deliver both quality and price leadership.
