OPPORTUNITIES AND LIMITATIONS OF ACCOMMODATIONS AND ACCESSIBILITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION ASSESSMENT

Accommodations and accessibility are two primary mechanisms for promoting inclusion in higher education assessment. Assessment accommodations are a series of individually allowable changes to assessments (e.g., in their timing, allowable inputs/responses by students, location, etc.). The use of accessibility features for assessment, on the other hand, is informed by the concept of Universal Design for Assessment (UDA) and generally allows all students to engage with material in flexible ways in terms of timing, inputs/responses, location, and choice of activities. The principles of UDA are applied to assessments at the discretion of individual instructors. Both accommodations and accessibility promote inclusive higher education assessment, but both are limited in their scope. In this chapter, we make two arguments: first, instructors should have greater freedom to provide accommodations (while upholding those required by their university and national policy/law). The legal provision of accommodations is critical for the human rights of students with disabilities, but accommodations could also be extended to other students. Second, UDA is a powerful strategy to make assessment inclusive to diverse participants in higher education classrooms but could be strengthened by formal guidance in evaluations of instructors or as part of broader inclusion strategies at universities.