Simon

*Please note, names have been changed to maintain confidentiality.

Authors: Kevin Mason (Senior Assessment Researcher, Pearson), Dr Liyuan Liu (Senior Assessment Researcher, Pearson) 

Citation: Mason, K  & Liu, L. (2024) Modified exam papers: Interactive Question Papers/PDFs.  Available at: Modified exam papers case studies (Accessed: 22 November 2024). 

Simon is a Year 11 student from a mainstream secondary school who has been blind since birth and has used braille throughout his school life. When we spoke to him, he was preparing to take his GCSE Exams in summer 2024. He was doing GCSEs in Maths, English Language, English Literature, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Computer Studies, Geography, French and German. 

He spoke to us, with his mother, Rachel, about the challenges he faces preparing for and taking exams as a braillist. 

Our key findings: 

• Time-tabling with extra time and handling rest breaks can be challenging and requires flexibility and careful planning.
• Technology is crucial in ensuring that assessments are accessible.
• Diagrams and photographs used in exams can represent significant challenges to accessibility for students who are blind.
• Errors can be introduced into question papers when they are converted to braille, and this is difficult to handle in an exam. 

1. Timetabling with extra time and handling rest breaks can be challenging and requires flexibility and careful planning

Simon is a braillist who also gets 100% additional time. He says “that might sound quite fun, but actually it means every exam is very long” and exams can easily become a test of stamina. “For example, four hours is quite standard for me”. With this, he needs to take regular supervised rest breaks. As Rachel explains, “this means that a standard two-hour exam will be at least five hours for Simon”. 

It means that for each exam, Simon has to plan for when he is going to take his breaks, but that can change by how the exam is structured “It depends, sometimes I’ll play it by ear. I won’t work for more than an hour and a half, but if I’m tired after an hour I might take a break. But if the exam is broken into very clear sections, I’ll break on the section breaks”. 

The length of each exam has implications for the time tabling of his summer exams. He has had to postpone taking his GCSE English Literature until November to ease this congestion, which he described himself as “devastated about”. In addition, Rachel explained, “We’re looking at six nights of supervision during his GCSEs, plus having not to do a whole GCSE subject because it is just impossible”. The alternative, for Simon was “doing an 11-hour day, which is really not on”. 

2. Technology is crucial in ensuring that assessments are accessible

Simon uses a range of technology to help him take his exams. For most exams, as well as having a hardcopy braille paper, he uses a school computer, which is a set up to mimic his own computer - the keyboard layout and settings are the same, as Simon needs to touch-type. He uses Word and a Braille display in exam-mode so he can’t access any files other than the ones that he is permitted to access. To help read the screen, Simon uses JAWS (Job Access With Speech), which is screen reading software developed for users whose vision loss prevents them from seeing screen content or navigating with a mouse. This software is very powerful, even if he finds he can be a bit of a “memory hog” and requires a lot of RAM in his PC to work. This can cause the program to slow down or crash after it has been used for an extended time, a problem that can be fixed by re-starting the software, but this can take some of his time or interrupt his flow of thought.  

However, using technology to enable greater access does not solve every problem. In maths for example, he uses a hardcopy braille paper as the way that his Word and JAWS and his braille display presents mathematical notation in the exam papers is using a primarily American code called Nemeth code rather than in his standard UEB2. Although Simon understands a little of Nemeth code, it is a very different code and he would not be able to use it to submit his answers, meaning that if he wanted to use technology at the moment, he would have to learn a completely different braille code to read, but not write, his maths answers. In German, the technology strips out the capitalisation and accents in words, which makes it much more difficult to read and understand. 

One technology he does find very useful for maths is three-dimensional models of the diagrams. He says “I really enjoyed those… those are really great and give a really good understanding of the concept… some people can easily, if they see a 2-D representation of a 3-D diagram, they can picture that. I just can’t… those questions are not really possible without a 3-D model at all”. 

3. Diagrams and photographs used in exams can represent significant challenges to accessibility

 There are many challenges for Simon associated with the presentation of diagrams in exam papers. One of the biggest is the fact that they are often produced using Zychem paper, “which means that essentially you have a limited amount of textures you can do, because it is all made out of the one sort of thing”. This is different to the diagrams that he is able to use in school, where they can get “a feely line, stick it onto the paper and then put the points on tactile points, and that means they can make vastly different textures”. However, although this is useful in lessons, it doesn’t prepare him for the way that diagrams are going to be presented to him in the exam. 

The diagrams themselves, and the modifications for them vary from subject to subject even within awarding organisations, with Rachel pointing out that some of the biology ones are “really quite good, actually”, but Simon likened the difference in the availability of different textures to “having full colour diagrams and then being presented with black and white in the exam. It is a huge downgrade”. 

There are two particular issues that Simon finds especially difficult. The first is where the grid lines are the same texture as the graph line. He says that “there’s no way at all to tell where it is, and you need to ask a TA to move your finger along it”. The second is, in maths graphs there are negative axes. When the graph axes are only positive, the numbers can be put at the bottom or at the side along the axes. However, when there are negative values in the graph, putting the numbers along the axes means that the grid lines are broken to make space for the numbers and this makes them very difficult to read, “when you’re tracking the lines and all you can feel is two finger-tips worth, you can’t feel those lines where they are broken and it means Simon can’t use those graphs effectively”. One thing that might help is establishing conventions for the use of different kinds of lines for different things, for example, dotted lines for all label lines, which would help Simon tell the difference between a label and something that is part of the graph. 

Photographs used in exam papers can provide their own difficulties. Often the audio description that is provided lacks a lot of detail. “They say, for example, ‘photo of a beach’. What’s that supposed to mean? Whereas if, for example, ‘it is a photo of a beach with some litter on it with a big fence put up to stop tourists going there because it's too busy’ and then it's your geography case study, that's a totally different thing to saying picture of beach or picture of beach with lots of sand”. It’s really important that the description is full and accurate if the photograph is linked to a longer six- or nine-mark question. 

4. Errors can be introduced into question papers when they are converted to braille, and this is difficult to handle in an exam 

Something Simon has found disappointingly often during his mock exam is errors in the braille papers, or in the tactile diagrams. “This is an anxiety for me, because in print papers, there are barely any mistakes and if there are, everybody is going to be credited and it will probably even be in the news and it won’t be a big deal”. However, he has found that mistakes are more common in braille papers, “you just carry on and you’re in that sort of exam mindset and you don’t think that this question could be wrong… and so you could use a vast amount of time, I might have lost five or 10 marks because I could have used loads of extra time on that question that I could have used for later questions… I expect actually having to think about physics ideas, but I don’t expect to think, ‘Is this is braille correct, or is that number correct?’”. 

Disclaimers and Acknowledgements 

a. This case study is based on one person’s experience, which gives us a valuable window into the specific challenges and opportunities they encountered but may not be representative of all students.    

b. The above case study is part of the Pearson Modified Exam Papers Project, our interviewed student sat for subjects across three exam boards, and feedback was not linked solely to Pearson Edexcel GCSE exams.     

Acknowledgements    

We would like to acknowledge the important contribution towards the work in this case study from the UK LOOK family and our young student expert, in particular their support in the Modified Exam Papers Research Project 2022-2024.    

Furthermore, we wish to take the opportunity to extend our heartfelt thanks to our colleagues at Pearson UK, spanning various teams. These individuals include:   

Benjamin Redmond, Grace Grima, Hayley Dalton (QSR - Technical & Statistical Intelligence) for their invaluable comments, feedback and professional support during the case study.   

Rachel Laking (Modified Formats Team), Louise Denman (PSQ Proc Ops) for their role in highlighting the significance of conducting this research project and for providing recommendations based on the unique scenarios of students as presented in the case study.   

Joanna Biggers and Lesley Roberts (Communications & Engagement Team) for their noteworthy contributions and support in shaping the MPP campaign plan. Their meticulous review and editing of the case study have been fully appreciated.     

Sam Hone for her contribution to the Modified Paper Campaign and collaboration with the Communications & Engagement Team to promote our case studies. This collaboration aims to enable more families and schools to benefit from these individual stories.