Accessibility of segmented reading comprehension passages for students with disabilities

This study explores factors that affect the accessibility of reading comprehension assessments for students with disabilities in grade 8 public school classrooms. The study consisted of assessing students using reading comprehension passages that were broken down into shorter "segments" or "chunks" in order to assess the validity and effectiveness of segmenting and the reliability of assessment in segmenting. The results of the segmenting study indicated that: (1) segmenting did not affect reading performance of students without disabilities; suggesting that it does not compromise the validity of reading assessment; (2) segmenting did not affect reading performance of students with disabilities; and (3) the segmented version had a higher reliability for students with disabilities without affecting the reliability for students without disabilities.