[nfbmi-talk] a great nfb lawsuit!

[joe harcz Comcast]

National Federation of the Blind and Parents of Blind Child File Suit to Make K-12 Assessments Accessible

 

PR Newswire

 

NEW MILFORD, N.J., Jan. 24, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --

The National Federation of the Blind (NFB),

along with its affiliate organizations the NFB of New Jersey and the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children (NOPBC), and the parents of a blind

high school student in New Milford (named in the suit as S.H.) have filed suit (case number: 14-392) in federal court against PARCC, Inc., a nonprofit

corporation that was established in 2013 by the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, a consortium currently made up of eighteen

states, including New Jersey and the District of Columbia.  This consortium received a $186 million federal grant through the U.S. Department of Education's

Race to the Top Assessment Program competition, with which it has promised to develop "next-generation" academic assessments for use in measuring the academic

progress and achievement of K-12 students.  The suit has been filed because assessment tests created by PARCC, Inc. that will be field tested at S.H.'s

high school and other locations this spring are not accessible to students who are blind.  The field test assessments will not be offered in Braille, nor

will they be available for use with text-to-speech screen reading technology that is commonly used by blind students.  S.H. is a Braille reader.  Another

assessment consortium, known as Smarter Balanced, has announced that it will make its tests accessible in all phases of development, including field testing.

 The suit alleges that the failure to make the assessments accessible during field testing violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Rehabilitation

Act of 1973.

 

Source:

http://www.einnews.com/pr_news/187077327/national-federation-of-the-blind-and-parents-of-blind-child-file-suit-to-make-k-12-assessments-accessible