[NFB-Science] Exam questions and situation

[Mariya Vasileva]

Sent from my iPhone
Hi, to start, I was curious to know has anybody used my math lab by Pearson to take exams for their math classes, if you have, can it be done even though the professor may use a different method of administering exams such as paper? I am asking this because this semester I will be using my math lab for homework assignments, but the exams will be done via paper, I have used a reader for these in the past, and for one of my courses it went well, but for the course after that, it went well up to one particular exam where they told me how I should’ve done a certain problem on that exam after it was over. Also, this is because I was made to do the tests and homework assignments on another online system primarily, it is the system called ALEKS by McGraw-Hill education, this system is not as accessible as my math lab is. The second semester that I had to use this System on because I failed the class the first time despite my efforts, I switched to doing the exams on a computer in a PDF document. This was not readable for the most part, because whenever there were images in the document, it would open up and tell me that it is a malformed document because it appears to be scanned, and if it was, or when it was partially readable, a lot of the questions I had to have confirmed by another person to make sure that I had read out the questions right by my screen reader because  the characters and the numbers would be read out wrong. The screen reader that I am using is NVDA because it took less time to put together. So an example of this switching around as I have come to call it, would be: (x+2)^2 visually, would be read out as via my screen reader as 2+2x and the parentheses would not be mentioned at all. Using my math lab, I have never experienced any of these issues, because I have read out the math as it should be whether or not someone confirmed it for me visually. Of course, I cannot have my exams be sent to the disability services office in a word document because of the possible risk of modifying the questions by accident, and Florida doesn’t have the resources in the blind services agency to emboss them for me in braille. Minnesota does however, but I’m not sure of the turnaround time in receiving the exams and braille during my exam weeks in time. I have emailed my professor about this, so she is aware as to what issues I have faced in the past and why I’m asking for this. Of course, I am not trying to differentiate myself in anyway from anybody else, as I have told the disability services office time and time again. If this gets denied what should I do. Just as a note, this will be my first calculus course, so learning the Nemeth code for it and the concepts is all new to me, so it is very important that I get this straightened out for this course and future courses. Plus, due to what has happened, I have to boostback up my GPA and get myself back on good academic standing like I have been before all this started. Also, for future courses that may not use my math lab for neither homework or exams, how should I handle that situation whenever I get around to taking those courses. This will be concerning professors that may use a different online system or a possibly not very readable math book and paper to do their assignments and exams from. I am asking this to see if I can use this tool for all of the future courses due to its very accessible nature.