The complaint by Massimo Vettoretti, 42, from Treviso: “The instrument they gave me didn’t work, I still don’t know if I will be registered or not”
PADUA. Access to university admission tests should be a right that can easily be extended to anyone wishing to undertake a degree course, yet even a single obstacle can prove insurmountable, even when it shouldn’t. It is enough for a blind person to ask to carry out the test using a device that “translates” what appears on the screen into Braille, and the system collapses. He succeeds Massimo Vettoretti, 42, from Treviso, an aspiring psychology freshman. It happens at the University of Padua, innocent theater of a knot that has come to a head in the provision of entrance tests to faculties throughout Italy. Specifically, those that are designed by Cisia, the inter-university consortium that annually delivers thousands of valid tests for admission to most of the courses of all Italian universities.
Cisia creates the “Tolc”, the online tests that, since last year, those who want to enroll at the University can take from home, and then be included in the ranking. “I had already found that the online platform for Tolc was inaccessible,” says Vettoretti. «However, I pre-registered in Padua, and I contacted the Disability Office to explain that I needed assistance to take the test. They also confirmed to me that the Tolc were not accessible, offering me the only possibility to do it at home, having a reader read the questions aloud, or go to the university ». The first solution is difficult to do: “I use a device to read that translates what is on the screen into Braille,” explains Vettoretti. «I cannot, like anyone, answer even complex, mathematical questions just by listening. The University offered me what they called a “reasonable accommodation”, that is, the possibility of taking the test in faculty on an ad hoc structured pdf file ».
The day of the test, the nasty surprise: «When I opened the file, however, I didn’t read anything on my bar. The contents were nonsensical. I even felt at fault, because it seemed impossible to me that they had made such a gross mistake. We also did various tests with the university staff, and in the end we found that the file, which had been made available by Cisia, was not accessible. In fact, I was unable to take the test, and therefore enroll, and today I still don’t know what will happen ».
However, reassurance comes from the university. “We have done everything we could do, that is to put pressure on the CISIA to find a solution,” explained Professor Laura Nota, the rector’s delegate on inclusion and disability. «We had made all the requests of the case, but unfortunately we later found that that solution was not accessible. We are still evaluating how to manage the situation, but certainly the university will take into account the problem that has occurred, and the possibility of enrollment will not be compromised ». “A Kafkaesque situation”, is the comment of Mario Barbuto, national president of the Italian Union for the Blind and Visually Impaired (Uici). “We had already reported their problems with online testing to CISIA,” he says. “Massimo’s case is emblematic, because he was denied the right to education. Blind people have been easily attending university for a hundred years. For nearly twenty there have been regulations that oblige public administrations to produce accessible material, and the ways to do this are known. As Uici we will ask the Minister Messa why public money is used to perpetuate these situations of discrimination ”.
Cisia’s reply is ready, through its director Giuseppe Forte: “There was a technical problem, our mistake for which the University of Padua has no responsibility. In the emergency period, we quickly passed from tests carried out in university classrooms controlled by university staff to tests delivered at the participants’ homes. Compared to the specific request received from Padua, we tried to offer additional support, that of being able to carry out the test independently from the candidate’s PC, without a tutor reader. It is only due to an error in the regeneration of the PDF that the test could not be carried out as agreed: the regenerated file contained an error that did not allow correct use. We take full responsibility for this. We undoubtedly welcome the Uivi proposal and take the responsibility of involving the association to obtain prior opinions on the release of future versions of the instruments that will be proposed “.
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