ACCESSIBILITY AND RELATED ASPECTS OF THE IMS QUESTION AND TEST INTEROPERABILITY SPECIFICATION

A HEATH

SHEFFIELD HALLAM UNIVERSITY PARTICIPATING IN CETNRE FOR EDUCATIONAL INTEROPERABILITY STANDARDS, UNITED KINGDOM

Throughout the world there are many disabled persons and it has been common for disabled persons to be excluded from or disadvantaged by common educational processes, including testing and assessment processes. Automating delivery of assessment with the aid of computers can help to overcome such inbuilt disadvantage in two ways. On an individual level a computer system can enable some specific adaptation not normally available with written tests. In a wider context, the standardizations that widespread delivery by computer requires can enable the more widespread use of hardware and approaches that are specific to accessibility needs and can also benefit all users, not just disabled ones.

From Jun 21st 2001 all technology, including educational materials, developed or acquired by the United States government must be accessible to users with disabilities. Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998 requires this in the U.S. Similar legislation is coming into play in other countries including Australia and the United Kingdom. Applications and content will need to be accessible to all.

The IMS project is producing technical interoperability specifications for educational contexts. IMS seeks to make its specifications enable accessible applications and content and an Accessibility Working Group has taken on the task of representing accessibility issues in the IMS specification development process. The specifications currently being addressed include the IMS Question and Test Interoperability Specification, a specification that seeks to enable the exchange of assessment and test data. With respect to this specification the group is considering both what the specification can represent, what it needs to be able to represent and what guidelines are necessary for the construction of applications that support the specification.

This talk looks at the IMS Question and Test Interoperability Specification from an accessibility perspective. We look at the technicalities of how the current specification measures up to those requirements of the Accessibility Working Group that are so far clear, what is needed of the representation scheme and what mechanisms could be used now and in the future to meet accessibility requirements. This includes the use of media, the structure of the specification, stylesheets to customize material for accessibility-specific devices and the perspective of applications that support the specification.

Keywords: accessibility, assessment, specification, interoperability