Employment Testing for Handicapped Persons

Abstract

In the competitive employment situation, in which some kind of standardized assessment instrument is used to compare applicants and select the most qualified, persons with certain physical handicaps are at a disadvantage because their handicap impedes measurement of the intended knowledges, skills, or abilities through the standardized instrument. This paper describes the problems that arise in standardized employment testing, especially for visually impaired and hearing impaired persons. Solutions are proposed for these problems wherever possible. For visually impaired persons, the majority of the problems arise from the need to present test questions in an appropriate medium (e.g., braille) and to adjust time limits accordingly. Among hearing impaired persons, those who are profoundly, prelingually deaf tend to perform poorly on verbal tests. This true deficit in the English language raises fundamental questions for personnel selection specialists about the nature of verbal job requirements.