New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA): review of NZQA performance in respect of school qualifications.

Submission to the State Services Commission. April 2005.

Involvement of the Foundation in the education sector

From its origins over 100 years ago, the Foundation has been at the centre of the education of blind children. Until July 2000 the Foundation owned and operated the Homai school for blind students.

The Foundation is committed to working with the education and vision education sectors so that blind, deafblind and vision-impaired learners are able to access the developmental orientation and mobility training, adaptive daily living instruction, life skills, recreation and peer support programmes, and accessible format resources and library and information services they need to participate in the education system and then transition successfully to further study or work. These programmes are the building blocks of the ability to engage in lifelong learning.

The Foundation's vision for education

It is the Foundation's vision that New Zealand's blind, deafblind and vision-impaired children benefit from a dynamic interplay between the Expanded Core Curriculum and a range of "whole of life" programmes that prepare blind, deafblind, and vision-impaired citizens for the social participation which is central to the vision of a non-disabling society (see the New Zealand Disability Strategy and the New Zealand Action Plan for Human rights).

This submission

This submission focuses on processes relating to the production in accessible formats of the written material used in education, and in particular for assessments and examinations. Access to the printed word is critical for education. Accessible formats that can be read by blind, deafblind, and vision-impaired people (e.g. braille, audio, electronic text, large print, and tactile diagrams) are a primary means of making it possible for blind, deafblind and vision-impaired students to access the curriculum alongside their sighted peers. Equitable access to the curriculum and its assessment documents is required for students who cannot read standard print.

Accessible format production in New Zealand

The Foundation operates accessible format production services that handle the transcription of complex textbooks, handouts, tests, and examination papers for schools throughout New Zealand. It produces the national secondary school examinations in accessible formats. These production activities are funded through a Ministry of Education contract.

Visual Resource Centres around the country also undertake accessible format production, although they do not transcribe the more complex works or national examinations.

The demand for accessible formats: some challenges

1,321 students are registered with the Vision Education Agency. Many students have individualised needs for accessible formats, and the relatively small numbers who require concurrent access to a particular text or exam in a particular format makes it difficult to achieve any economies of scale in the production of accessible formats. Indeed, predicting demand is difficult.

RNZFB cannot predict what course options senior students will take next, and where the demand may suddenly arise in terms of texts in particular formats. A textbook which is in production but is no longer needed has not only used up valuable time which could have been spent on producing something else, but will almost certainly have to be replaced because the student now requires a textbook for the new subject. Some materials will be produced for one person and used only by that child. The cost of making accessible formats is heavily weighted towards producing the master copy, and so if Child A at School 1 requires a different maths text from Child B at School 2, the costs are significant.

In fact, accessible format production for the numbers of users in New Zealand will always be reactive. The National Certificate of Education Achievement is a system marked by flexibility and local choice. The variety of written materials that can be incorporated into a course a school chooses to run, the freedom schools have to shape their courses, the cycle of revision which is already apparent in the publishing of textbooks created for the NCEA syllabi, and the increasing technicality of school-level subjects through the inclusion of tertiary courses all create unprecedented demand for complex accessible format production jobs.

More efficient accessible format production is technically possible

Traditionally accessible format production has been time-consuming when done to the internationally recognised standards followed by the Foundation. The print original must be rendered accurately, and meaningful diagrams turned into tactile form or verbalised so that the reader gets an exact equivalent of the printed document. Quality checking must be in place to ensure that departures from the print original or technical flaws in the production of the format are detected and corrected. National examination papers are proofed with exacting care. Their production may involve a considerable amount of contact with the NZQA.

Although electronic processes are now used to produce most accessible formats, the skill lies both in applying the technology needed to create the physical item to the required standard and in the knowledge of the producer who must handle, say, text in a foreign language or documents that are highly technical and/or graphically complex.

Electronic files from publishers should in theory reduce the time taken to produce accessible formats. Currently the RNZFB experience is that requesting files can be frustrating. Publishers are not obliged to respond to these requests, and sometimes answer that they cannot deliver the files, or can supply them only in a proprietary format that is difficult to unlock. Delays that are unforeseeable at the outset can be longer than it would have taken to scan the work. In the six months from January to June 2004 just 11% of materials that were brailled were produced from the on time arrival of publishers’ files.

Recommendations

• That schools be obliged to ensure that their internal test and examination materials are, as required, produced in accessible formats that conform to the same levels of quality the Ministry has set for the production of accessible formats by the Foundation.
• That schools use technology to minimise the time taken to produce accessible formats for students who are blind, deafblind, or vision-impaired. They will do this by creating and communicating master documents to the Foundation or another producer in a suitable electronic format.
• That the Ministry of Education and NZQA consider an XML-based national file standard for the storing of educational materials in order to reduce the time required for accessible format production. This initiative would involve other partners, e.g. the National Library of New Zealand with regards to legal deposit requirements.
• That the Ministry of Education seek to increase the use of information communications technology among blind, deafblind and vision-impaired students in order to support successful transition to further study or employment, and to help students engage in lifelong learning.