Equal opportunities for access to university education: language testing for students with disabilities

This paper presents a project funded by the Italian Ministery of Education, University and Research (MIUR) in 2013-2015 to develop accessible language tests. Although the increasing numbers of disabled students enrolling in tertiary level education can only be seen in a positive light, universities are still insufficiently prepared for dealing with the many issues that this trend raises. For enrollment, Italian universities require mandatory certification of general English skills at the CEFR B1 level. Students must often also demonstrate their skills in written Italian as a mandatory entry requirement. The main focus of the project presented here was to provide students with sensory, language and learning disabilities with equal opportunities in the language testing required for university entrance, while maintaining those features essential to ethical testing, test validity, and fairness.