Empty exam cd’s for dyslexic schoolchildren
By Rikke Syberg, May 16th 2007.
On Monday, when Danish dyslexic schoolchildren had to sit their exams in reading and spelling, it almost went wrong. Last week, approximately 500 schools received a cd containing texts which were to be read out loud by the speech synthesizers located on the schools. This should assist pupils with special needs in obtaining marks comparable to those of other pupils. On Friday, however, the Danish school authority discovered that the cd’s were empty, for which reason they had to send the schools an e-mail with a link to the relevant texts as an emergency option. Even though most schools had changed their e-mail addresses as a result of the Danish reform of municipal structures, the school authority succeeded in calling all schools whose pupils risked being affected by the error. The test was thus carried out as planned. One teacher complained that the texts were submitted in pdf format which cannot be read by the speech synthesizers. According to the school authority, however, the texts were equally supplied in word format.
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