Excellence in Accessibility (A11Y) Award

In the United States, every student must take annual statewide assessments to measure their learning. These are high-stakes tests for the education system: the results guide campus funding, evaluate teacher performance, and help determine students’ grade‑level promotion or graduation eligibility. However, students with disabilities, students with diverse backgrounds, and the ""digital divide"" may mean many students can face hurdles like poor internet or older computers. As a leader in this field serving 28 states and jurisdictions, Cambium Assessment ensures these high stakes don't become unfair barriers. Our project is about providing equity to all students. We build the ""digital ramps"" that allow every student—regardless of their physical or cognitive needs—to participate. Because these tests carry such weight, accessibility isn't just a ""nice-to-have"" feature; it is a matter of requirement. We provide over 230 tools, like screen readers and speech-to-text, so that a student’s diverse context never interferes with their ability to show what they know. We ensure that when a state measures ""success,"" no student is left out because the technology wasn't built for them.

Imagine taking a high-stakes exam on a digital platform where technology interferes with your test experience. The buttons are hard to use, instructions don’t work with assistive technology, or the format makes the test harder than the questions themselves. The Bluebook testing application was designed to solve that problem. Bluebook was designed so everyone can use it from the start, including students with disabilities. Instead of adding accommodation fixes or hacks later as a workaround, we designed the test experience to be clear, flexible, and accessible for all learners on any device. Test takers can listen to the test content, use assistive technology, adjust how the test looks and works, and practice in advance so there are no surprises on test day. We didn’t guess what people needed; we tested it with real students, listened to their feedback, and improved the design. The result is a testing experience that measures what students know, not how well they can navigate technology. At scale, this approach reduces errors, lowers stress, and makes testing fair and more reliable for millions of students. It also creates a model that other education, and workforce assessments can reuse, making inclusive technology the norm, not the exception.

We modernized Ontario’s provincial assessments from paper-based to online and rebuilt them using universal design with an aim to have every student participate fully and fairly. The e-assessment platform includes universal, on-screen accessibility tools, and scheduling flexibility is available to all learners without special requests. For students with special education needs or requiring special considerations, including those with Individual Education Plans (IEPs), EQAO offers additional accommodations that are applied consistently to each student’s assessment and widely used assistive technologies that are compatible and configured centrally. Where appropriate, assessment design choices are made to reduce unnecessary cognitive load and maintain fairness, with accessibility remaining priority.