Audio assistive technology and accommodations for students with visual impairments: Potentials and problems for delivering curricula and educational assessments

• Text-to-speech and auditory graphs have made learning materials more accessible.
• Audio accommodations are commonly administered in educational testing scenarios.
• Problems include technical difficulties, stigma, and validity issues.

Audio assistive technology and testing accommodations have become an increasingly prevalent and potentially useful means of promoting inclusivity in education. Technologies such as text-to-speech and other forms of audio information representation have helped to make curricula more accessible to people with visual impairments and other disabilities. Auditory accommodations in educational testing have also been implemented in an attempt to ensure equitable access to educational evaluations for people with disabilities. The potential benefits of audio assistive technology and accommodations notwithstanding, barriers remain to the implementation of audio in education for people with disabilities. Concerns with validity in audio tests, technical difficulties in the delivery of audio, and general stigma associated with the use of assistive technology and accommodations present formidable challenges that must be met before the full potential of audio assistive technology can be realised. This review examines current practices, potentials, and problems with the use of audio assistive technology and accommodations in educational settings.