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

[Robert Carnegie <Robert.Carnegie@seemis.com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Jason White [mailto:jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au]
Sent: 15 January 2003 00:05
To: uaccess-l
Subject: Re: [UACCESS-L] FW: Disabled students can't work within demands
of FCAT

> 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.

You make the case well for preferring braille, and it surely isn't
ready to be called "outmoded" as in the news story - but that isn't
to say that where some blind school students in America are using
technological assistance and haven't learnt braille, then they shouldn't
be allowed to take these tests using the aids that they are using.
Of course, _that_ isn't to say that braille should be thrown out.
That isn't the proposal - or so we must hope, anyway.

http://www.leon.k12.fl.us/public/news/fcat.html gives an account
(which I don't personally vouch for) of these tests.  The areas
covered are reading, writing, arithmetic and this year science,
but I get the impression here and elsewhere that the intellectual
requirement is not too onerous - that is, if you do hope to get into
uniiversity or college then you should be able to do /this/ test
standing on your head?

This issue is in the area of our shared special interest, but it
probably isn't the worst thing happening in public life in Florida.
I heard one commentator asserting as a rule of thumb that whatever
you hear about public maladministration there, it's probably true.
And some parochial U.S. journalism really stinks.  So I'm not sure
I trust the story, or strongly support the cause here as the
Big Issue this year.  It ought to be easy to fix.

For that matter, I may get yelled at, but I'm not sure I go for a
dyslexic guy being a doctor and writing my prescriptions (and yeah,
that function /is/ computerised now in civilised countries, but still)
- that's one of the other concerns raised in the Associate Editor's
column.  He's for it.

I wonder how much money technology companies are spending on lobbying
the executive down in Florida.

Robert Carnegie
Hamilton, Scotland
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