[nfbmi-talk] victory for blind students

[David Robinson]

Joe,

  Thanks for sharing.  We need to get this around to our schools etc. in 
Michigan.  We had a case in jackson recently which was resolved after a 
series of complaints from us and parents.  I am sure that most high 
schoolers who are blind do not get these practice sets at all.

Dave
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "joe harcz Comcast" <joeharcz at comcast.net>
To: <nfbmi-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 25, 2014 5:52 PM
Subject: [nfbmi-talk] victory for blind students


> Access to information through every step of the educational process and 
> indeed in other venues like say the VR programs is a civil right!
>
> And a victory for one is a victory for all.
>
> Thus I submit the following news story from New Jersely and not the 
> National Federation of the Blind, not for the blind was involved in this 
> suit.
>
> Joe
> James Kleimann/NJ.com . NEW MILFORD - A borough family has settled a 
> federal lawsuit with an education consortium after it agreed to make 
> practice tests
>
> accessible to blind students starting in spring of 2014. Filed in late 
> January by the parents of a blind 16-year-old New Milford High School 
> student, the
>
> lawsuit claimed that blind students did not have an equal or proper 
> opportunity to practice tests as they prepared for required standardized 
> assessments.
>
> The lack of practice tests being made available represented a violation of 
> the Americans with Disabilities Act, attorneys for plaintiff "S.H." wrote. 
> Under
>
> the settlement with consortium Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for 
> College and Careers (PARCC), PARCC will make tests available to blind 
> students
>
> by Spring of 2014. Hard-copy Braille practice tests and online versions 
> with "refreshable Braille displays and text-to-speech screen reader 
> software" will
>
> be ready for blind students, according to the settlement. The education 
> consortium, a non-profit founded in 2013 that includes 18 states, received 
> a $186
>
> million federal education grant to devise assessment tests for millions of 
> students starting in 2015. None of the practice tests initially devised by 
> the
>
> consortium contained braille or the common screen-reader software, the 
> lawsuit claimed. New Milford High School will be among the schools that 
> participates
>
> in a trial run of the test program , according to The Record. In a press 
> release, Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation for the 
> Blind,
>
> lauded the settlement . "Blind students are far too often forced to wait 
> for equal access to educational materials, and as a result end up lagging 
> far
>
> behind their sighted peers in academics," he said. "This important 
> settlement will address that problem by ensuring that PARCC's assessments 
> and practice
>
> tests are accessible to blind students at the same time that they are 
> deployed to all students.
>
>
>
>
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