About: Assessment for Students with Visual Impairments
Assessment is one area that is often a concern for teachers working with braille-reading students. Assessments can be used to determine student mastery and overall achievement as well as characteristics that indicate ability. Today, teachers are faced with rising demands to demonstrate learning outcomes for students in their classrooms and “high-stakes testing” puts increased accountability pressure on schools. This section of this website will address both specialized assessments (i.e., those that gather and provide information specific to students with visual impairments), and general assessments (i.e., those that are given to all students).
Specialized assessments for students with visual impairments include the following:
- Functional Vision Assessments
- Learning Media Assessments
- Adaptive Technology Assessments
The results of these assessments provide important information regarding how to create and adapt the learning environment to be most beneficial to the student.
On the other hand, general assessments provide teachers and parents with information about a student’s progress in a wide variety of school endeavors. General assessments range from weekly spelling tests that show progress in small increments, to yearly achievement tests that may indicate readiness to move forward to the next school grade.
The information contained in this section will help you understand the information that can be gathered using each type of assessment. In addition, information is provided to help you decide how to make adaptations to general assessments routinely used in your class.
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