Are assessment accommodations cheating? A critical policy analysis

Assessment accommodations are used globally in higher education systems to ensure that students with disabilities can participate fairly in assessment. Even though assessment accommodations are supposed to promote access, not success, they are commonly portrayed as potentially being cheating in that they provide certain students with unfair advantages. This may lead students to avoid applying for accommodations for fear of being labelled ‘cheaters’. Various security practices are often implemented within assessment accommodation processes to detect and prevent cheating and malingering. However, there remains a lack of theoretical understanding of the discursive interconnections between assessment accommodations and assessment security. In this study, we conduct a critical policy analysis to unpack how Canadian assessment accommodation policies have problematised assessment accommodations as a potential site for cheating. We show that Canadian universities use considerable resources to prevent cheating as accommodations are administered. In doing so, they portray students with disabilities as potential cheaters. We situate these policies in the wider societal context of the ‘fear of the disability con’, which perpetuates discrimination towards people with disabilities. We argue that assessment accommodation policies belong to the realm of assessment security rather than integrity and may thus fail to promote equity and inclusion.