I won't comment on the generalist v specialist issue here since my own views
have swung back and forth over the last twelve years and even now I can have
a lively argument on the subject with no-one else present.

As regards the training of assessors (and I use the word training
deliberately) this cannot be a one-off thing. The idea that someone can be
trained over a brief period then turned loose to go on doing much the same
thing for ever more is harmful. As has already been said, the
Plymouth/Central Lancs MA course serves a totally different purpose. It
provides a valuable opportunity for those already established in some aspect
of HE and disability to reflect with their peers and take their own education
to a new level. CCPD already has staff taking the course and I expect more to
do so in future, though many are already experienced assessors.

Assessing is an essentially mature or qualified person's task. I have known a
few exception where relatively young and inexperienced people have done
better than I could have hoped, but generally speaking assessors need to have
the substantial qualification(s) or experience in their chosen fields before
moving on to assessing. This is because they have to put all that background
into a complicated framework of other issues which are complicated enough by
themselves.

The Access Centres in the South East (East London, Middlesex, Sussex and
ourselves) were asked to provide an initial training course on behalf of NFAC
to generate new assessors in a "market" where demand seems always to grow
faster than supply. We realised we couldn't possibly be responsible for the
core professional knowledge of conditions like blindness, deafness, dyslexia
etc in the time available. We had to expect this already in our candidates
and devote ourselves to the core skills and related knowledge: interviewing,
report writing, relevant technologies, the nature of HE and its challenges to
various disabilities, current legislation, DSA regulations, etc. In the time
available this was more than sufficient.

Meanwhile, nothing stands still and we find ourselves constantly in need of
updating the assessors we already have. Being bright enthusiasts they
themselves often introduce us to new technologies or strategies which then
must be shared. So CPD is just as important as any initial training and again
the local network lays on shared training days. Our most recent one contained
feedback from our IT trainers who visit students several weeks after the
equipment has been delivered, and they had some interesting things to tell
our assessors about IT strategies we tend to take for granted.

In short our assessor training qualifies people to assess ON BEHALF OF THE
FEDERATION. It is not a course accredited by some academic body outside NFAC
but is its own internal assurance that those who assess for it, and while
they assess for it, are up to scratch.

Despite how I began, we do tend to encourage new applicants to restrict the
range of their chosen disabilities to begin with. Visual handicaps entail a
wide range of very specialist technology, deafness entails communication
skills and some technologies unique to the condition, the effects of physical
disabilities may seem intuitive but their variety is immense as is the set of
related strategies and equipment, and dyslexia is not as simple or obvious as
some would like to think it.

Dave Laycock

Head of CCPD
Chair of NADO
Computer Centre for People with Disabilities
University of Westminster
72 Great Portland Street
London W1N 5AL

tel. 020 7911-5161
fax. 020 7911-5162
WWW home page: http://www.wmin.ac.uk/ccpd/