Blog

TAO Advance Recognized by the EdTech Awards for Accessibility in Online Assessment

We’re thrilled to announce that Open Assessment Technologies has been recognized as a finalist through the EdTech Awards, presented by EdTech Digest, in the “Cool Tools’ category for our accessible test delivery solution, TAO Advance.  

The EdTech Awards were established in 2010 to recognize, acknowledge, and celebrate the most exceptional innovators, leaders, and trendsetters in education technology. Featuring Edtech’s best and brightest, the annual program shines a spotlight on cool tools, inspiring leaders and innovative trendsetters across the K-12, Higher Education, and Skills and Workforce sectors.

About TAO Advance

TAO Advance is the most enhanced digital test-runner on the market, designed for best-in-class accessibility to ensure institutions can provide all learners with fair and equitable online testing experiences. The solution boasts a clean and modern responsive interface that eliminates distractions for test-takers while offering advanced accommodation tools, like Text-to-Speech.

“Accessibility in online assessment simply can’t be overlooked. All too often, accessibility becomes an afterthought, and retrofitting systems with these features can cause challenges for their users. By building TAO Advance for accessibility from the ground up, we can ensure that test-takers of all needs have the opportunity to demonstrate their skills and advance through the education system.” – Andre Nunes, Head of Product at Open Assessment Technologies

Following WCAG 2.1 AA and Section 508 Guidelines, TAO Advance was developed through extensive user research and testing during planning and design and through all stages of development. We sought a wide range of users of differing abilities and ages, including those as young as 6 years old, to expand our understanding and challenge the solution. This, along with the native accessibility standards built into the framework, helped us ensure that the platform was truly designed for accessibility from the ground up.

TAO is built to empower its users to own their own solution and their content, and is deeply committed to using IMS standards to increase interoperability of assessment content (QTI) and linking to learning environments via LTI.  TAO is compliant with these standards and will continue seeking certifications in new versions of these standards.

QTI has added essential HTML5 elements that can be used in the semantic markup of content to aid users of assistive technology.  This important update also included WAI-ARIA tags to identify content that isn’t obvious via the HTML markup. 

TAO Advance seamlessly integrates with the TAO Ignite, Pro and Enterprise platforms to offer a reliable, top-notch testing experience for students of all abilities. 

Contact us today to find out how you can use TAO to deliver the equitable online testing experience students deserve.