Well I think I've finally turned into a grumpy old git, because my first
reaction is to say "if only he put as much effort into studying as
cheating", along with "he's only cheating himself" and other such comments.
I'm guessing it's a he.
Of course, the solution is for institutions to provide their own equipment
in exams, or where students need to use their own equipment to have a
policy that equipment will be checked beforehand and any documents, macros,
scripts or glossary entries that could provide access to information
relevant to the examination will be removed from the computer. It's probably
more likely that a student could be tempted to use auto-text functions in MS
Word to obtain additional text that might support an examination answers
when using their own equipment.
This assumes institutions have competent technical staff capable of both
maintaining assistive technology equipment for use in exams and checking for
hidden documents, scripts, macros, auto-text entries etc on student-owned
equipment used for exam purposes. Luckily, UK-based universities will have
already used their funding allocations to recruit and train specialist
technical staff who understand the issues related to assistive technology
use, so won't have to worry about this problem.
Ian Francis
----- Original Message -----
From: "Barry G" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, October 28, 2007 9:37 PM
Subject: Very disappointed at - but we are all human...
Hi folks, I am a blind user of the JAWS screen reader software as well as a
DSA needs assessor and was, although perhaps a little naievely, very
disappointed to see the text that I have pasted below posted on a Jaws
mailing list.
I hasten to point out that, firstly, the originator of the mail was based in
the USA and, secondly, the list moderator and almost all of the list members
jumped on the topic immediately.
Jaws has a very good scripting ability and it would appear the the
perpetrator of this little number has used this feature to insert chunks of
exam-related text that can be buried and that will be spoken by Jaws without
appearing on the screen, although they can also be inserted as required.
This would enable an unscrupulous student who is using Jaws in an
examination to cheat . I regret having to say this, but perhaps this
information needs to be diseminated...
Inserted text follows...
> Hello everyone.
> I have made a set of scripts for cheating on exams/test. The scripts
> work like this. When you press one of the different hotkeys to give an
> answer, control 1 through 7, control shift 1 to control shift 7,
> control f1 through f12 and control shift f1 through f12, once or twice
> quickly, jaws will speak a different answer without showing anything
> on the screen. I have been using these for 2 years now, and never got
> caught. Mine are for wordpad , but they can be used with any other
> application by just renaming the files to the application we want. The
> scripts give more than 70 answers, and what I usually do is grab my
> notes file, copy one line, paste it, press backspace and space bar so
> there is no line break between a sentence and another because if
> there's a break the script will will show a compile error message. You
> can put in as much information as you want in each hot key slot, but
> it can get tedious to get through a lot of information from just one
> key, so what I do is put different small bits of information in the
> different keys. I never used up all of my keys, but if anyone needs
> more slots, just tell me and I will definetly do something about it.
> if anyone is interested in using these scripts, contact me off list.
> my adress is
>
...inserted text ends.
All the best,
Barry G
Barry G
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