Guidance on Accessibility – Reading assessments

The NOA experience is designed following the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).  

Accessibility Tools 

NOA has a range of tools to help learners access the assessments. 

Zoom tool – learners can increase and decrease the size of the questions, including tools such as the ruler. 

Colour contrasts – learners who require alternative background / font colour presentations can select an alternative display presentation from the tools menu. The following configurations are available: 

Extra time – there is an option to allow specific learners extra time on the assessment. Please see guidance below on when it is appropriate to provide extra time. 

Guidance on providing support for children with additional needs 

These materials are suitable for most learners who are accessing the National Curriculum. The majority of learners will be able to take the tests as a whole-class exercise, but there may be some learners who might need slightly different arrangements to enable them to access the tests effectively. 

The principle behind access arrangements is to ‘level the playing field’: to ensure that learners perform to the best of their ability but that access arrangements do not give them an unfair advantage. 

In some cases, learners’ difficulties are central to the skill being assessed and in these instances access arrangements should not be made. A learner may experience decoding difficulties, for example. In this case, it would be inappropriate for the learner to have the support of a reader in the reading assessment, as the ability to decode is a central element of the skill being assessed. 

It is important that learners who have a particular difficulty that is not relevant to the skill being assessed should not be penalised. For example, a learner with significant fine motor control difficulties may benefit from additional time to answer the questions. This could be provided for the reading assessment because the skill being assessed is not typing speed. Additional time may allow the learner to complete the test and therefore lead to a more valid assessment of their skill. If the learner is more used to having a scribe (amanuensis) then this may be an alternative approach. On the other hand, for a learner with more general learning difficulties, providing additional time is not in the learner’s best interests if he or she has completed all they can do in the standard time. 

It is important to note that overuse of additional time will lead to unreliable results. The reading assessment is a timed test. Learners should not be given additional time as a matter of course, unless their additional needs are recognised, and extra time is part of their usual way of working in class. 

For learners with significant attention difficulties, having the opportunity to take short breaks during testing may enable them to perform to the best of their ability. It is possible to pause the tests to allow for short breaks. Other learners who are highly distractible may benefit from working in a separate room, with supervision. 

In all cases, the particular access arrangements being considered should be in line with the support the learner customarily receives in class. Any arrangements should not be a ‘one-off’ for the assessment.