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SOCIAL WORK TESTING AGENCY AND DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

Washington D.C.-- A national standardized testing agency will take significant steps to provide test takers with vision impairments with qualified readers, under a proposed settlement reached with the Justice Department and submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa.

The Department today simultaneously filed a complaint, alleging that the American Association of State Social Work Boards (AASSWB) violated Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and a consent decree resolving the allegations. The AASSWB, an association of state bodies that regulate the practice of social work, offers a licensing examination that is widely used throughout the country.

Under the terms of the consent decree, the AASSWB will:

• adopt written policies to ensure that readers are proficient in reading for people with vision impairments, are familiar with the examination, and have worked with the test-taker prior to the examination;

• pay for the reader and test-taker to work together to establish personal familiarity and to allow the reader to become acclimated to the test-taker's style of receiving information;

• work with the test-taker if there are reasonable grounds for believing that the reader will not be satisfactory;

• appoint an ADA coordinator to answer questions from people with disabilities who register for examinations and from employees within the company;

• train all employees regarding the new policies, and publicize the policies so that test-takers with disabilities will clearly know their options; and,

• pay $1,500 to the individual who filed the original complaint.

The agreement also makes clear that testing entities may also simply choose to allow test-takers with vision impairments to supply their own readers. The AASSWB denied allegations that it violated the ADA and insisted that it has provided people with disabilities with accommodations for many years.

"Given the wide-spread use and importance of standardized testing, it is vital that people who are blind be given a fair opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and ability in high-stakes standardized testing," said Bill Lann Lee, Acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. "Companies that offer standardized tests should follow this agreement so that the examinations they offer truly test the aptitude and achievement levels of people with disabilities."

The Justice Department began investigating the AASSWB after receiving a complaint from Douglas Elliott, a man who was blinded in Vietnam but had been a practicing social worker for more than 20 years. When Mr. Elliott moved to Iowa, he was required to pass the social work examination to be certified as a social worker in the state. Examination officials told Mr. Elliott that he could not provide his own reader. Instead, testing officials assigned a person to read for him.

The reader allegedly had never before read for a person with a vision impairment and experienced great difficulties during the exam. For example, the Department's complaint alleges that she stumbled over technical terms, made mistakes in marking and recording Mr. Elliott's answers, and became exhausted during the latter stages of the examination.

In September of last year, the Department had reached an out-of-court settlement on these same issues with the AASSWB and Assessment Systems, Inc. (ASI), which had previously worked with the AASSWB in administering the social work examination. However, due to indications that AASSWB was not complying with the out-of-court agreement, the Department filed today's suit. ASI has complied fully with the earlier agreement: it adopted new policies, trained over 200 employees across the country about the new policies, and informed dozens of other testing agencies about the new policies. Because of ASI's exemplary efforts, it was not a party to the complaint the Department filed today in federal court.

Title III of the ADA, which was passed by Congress in 1990, requires places of public accommodation to offer their programs and services in a manner that does not discriminate against people with disabilities. Title III contains a specific provision requiring that testing entities offer examinations in a manner that is accessible to people with disabilities.