Test Accommodations for Disabilities

Introduction

Access to educational opportunity or to the workplace often requires taking a standardized objective or performance test. For most people, taking on-demand exams present little difficulty, at least in terms of the form, structure, or procedures used by the test to assess the skill or learning construct. For individuals with disabilities, however, the structural characteristics of a test may present barriers that interfere with the assessment, yielding results that are inaccurate representations of what an individual knows or can do. For this reason, individuals with disabilities may take a test with an accommodation (i.e. adjustment) to the material used for the test, the procedure or procedures for administering the test, or to the way they respond. Accommodations are intended to remove or diminish the impact ...