[nfbmi-talk] victory for blind students

[joe harcz Comcast]

Yes, I doubt if most students get everything that sighted students get in 
accessable forms let alone such testing and prep materials.

But this shows what can be done when folks sue over these core issues and 
when brothers and sisters band together.

Peace with Justice,

Joe
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Robinson" <drob1946 at gmail.com>
To: "NFB of Michigan Internet Mailing List" <nfbmi-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 25, 2014 8:12 PM
Subject: Re: [nfbmi-talk] victory for blind students


> 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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>
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