[Blindmath] When accommodation is meaningless

[Susan Jolly]

Thanks so much to the commenter who pointed out the unfairness of testing blind students on perspective drawings.  This is a very serious unfairness.

I've been trying to read the latest research on test accommodations.  The fancy language is that the goal is to minimize construct-irrelevant demands.  The construct is what you are actually trying to test for.  An example of a construct is knowing the capital of Texas.  A construct-irrelevant demand would be having to read the question in print.  That is, using speech or braille or some other means to ask the question of students who can't read print is an example of avoiding the irrelevant demand.

http://padi-se.sri.com/publications.html

I am now beginning to appreciate that there are constructs that are being tested for where the problem is that there is NO possible accommodation for persons with certain disabilities.  This is because the nature of the disability is such that it is intrinsically impossible (or unreasonably difficult) for the person to deal with the construct.  It is sad that this problem hasn't already been addressed and can lead to unnecessarily discouraging competent persons.  I plan to try to explain this in more detail and then write to the reseachers in hopes of getting them to address it.

Sincerely,
SusanJ