Re: [UACCESS-L] FW: Disabled students can't work within demands of FCAT

[Jason White <jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au>]

Throughout secondary school and my undergraduate studies at university
I always received tests in braille, and would not have considered any
other approach to be viable. Even a computer with a braille display is
no substitute for the "random access" and convenience offered by a
real document (on paper). Nor does speech synthesis offer an adequate
alternative, especially in the case of mathematics,
languages/linguistics, musical theory etc., where specialized
notations or character sets are involved, all of which subjects,
incidentally, have played a significant role in my education.

The most challenging tests of all, in my experience, have been the
aptitude tests sometimes used to determine the award of scholarships
and to provide extra information about certain candidates for
university admission (e.g., mature age applicants or people whose
secondary school performance may have been affected by circumstances
arising from a disability or other factors). They are designed by psychometricians to 
assess comprehension,
reasoning and quantitative skills and typically have a multiple choice
format. I don't think I could have completed one of these tests if I
hadn't been given a braille copy. As it was, the process was still
rather time consuming and exhausting - two writing tasks (easy
enough), followed by a test paper  comprised mostly of reading
comprehension questions, followed in turn by a similarly lengthy paper
in mathematics (very different from the kinds of mathematical
exercises taught in school). I remember one series of questions
concerned with chemical reactions and the proportions of particular
gases remaining in the vessels after the reactions had been completed.
All the diagrams and explanations needed to answer the questions were
given, and the challenge was to undertake the necessary reasoning.
Again, only a braille copy would have sufficed.

Each section of the reading comprehension paper comprised several
passages on a particular topic, with questions after each passage, and
further questions at the end requiring analysis of all the passages in
the section. Obviously this involves a lot of moving back and forth
between questions and the passages themselves, which I doubt  I could
have done without a braille copy in hand.

As for the abacus, I last encountered one in primary school in 1981 or
1982, and even then it was treated as a curiosity rather than as a
tool for serious work. Most arithmetic was performed on paper in any
case.