South Florida Business Journal: Honorlock raises $25M as demand for online exam proctoring soars

April 27, 2021, Written by Ashley Portero – Reporter, South Florida Business Journal. Please see the original article here.

Honorlock, an online testing tool used by schools and universities to conduct proctored exams, secured $25 million in Series B funding.

Menlo Park, California-based Owl Ventures, one of the largest education technology-focused venture capital firms in the world, led the round.

The announcement comes a year after the Boca Raton-based company secured $11.5 million to accelerate its technology and talent investments. CEO Michael Hemlepp said demand for Honorlock’s online exam proctoring service exploded during the Covid-19 pandemic as schools and businesses traded in-person instruction for online courses.

“The pandemic highlighted an existing need for remote proctoring that honors and supports the test-taker experience while protecting the integrity of learning institutions,” he said.

The new funding will enable Honorlock to grow its footprint in the higher education market, Hemlepp added.

California-based Defy Partners and Arsenal Growth also participated in the Series B fundraising round. Honorlock will use the funding boost to enter new markets.

Honorlock has 134 employees, including 50 based in South Florida, and serves more than 300 corporate and higher education customers.

The company’s platform enables academic institutions to offer remote assessments while protecting exam integrity, the company reports. Honorlock is also used by organizations and businesses that provide professional development certifications.

Demand for Honorlock’s platform is projected to rise even as students return to in-person classes, the company told the Business Journal. Colleges and universities are expected to continue their online exam offerings to accommodate full-time remote students and others who may not be able to travel to campus for a test. Some instructors prefer to use online proctored exams to free up classroom time for other activities, the company said.

Owl Ventures Managing Director Amit Patel said the venture capital firm jumped at the opportunity to be at the forefront of the education industry’s shift to remote learning.

“Academic institutions are in the process of a much-needed tech revolution, and it’s happening fast,” he said. “Honorlock is helping move education forward by solving some of the most complex challenges schools face when building an effective and fair remote-learning infrastructure.”

Tess Mitchell

Tess has 20+ years of experience heading up corporate marketing teams in healthcare and higher education. She is passionate about thinking differently to lead teams to discover new and innovative ways to drive positive outcomes.

Crunchbase News: Honorlock Raises $25M For Online Exam Proctoring

April 27, 2021, Written by Sophia Kunthara – Reporter covering late-stage venture and startups, Crunchbase. Please see the original article here.

On-demand proctoring service Honorlock has raised $25 million in a new round of funding, the company said Tuesday. Owl Ventures led the round with participation from Defy Partners, Arsenal Growth and other existing investors. 

Honorlock uses artificial intelligence and human intelligence to give students a smooth remote testing experience, CEO Michael Hemlepp said in an interview with Crunchbase News. While other proctoring services either tend to “overflag” students for supposed cheating or use humans, which can be intimidating, Honorlock uses a feedback loop that’s scenario-driven, so that students aren’t unnecessarily being reported for suspected cheating.

The idea behind Honorlock is to “earn (students’) trust in the beginning and reduce anxiety, and have a more concentrated experience so their performance improves,” Hemlepp said.

Honorlock only goes to the educational institution if it has hard evidence of cheating. That tends to be relatively rare, according to Hemlepp. Otherwise, a trained proctor can de-escalate a situation if Honorlock’s technology can’t see a questionable situation through. 

“This market that we got really excited about, we just hadn’t seen a team that thought a lot about the students and was using AI technology to solve the problem,” Defy Partners Managing Director Neil Sequeria said in an interview.

Higher-education institutions including the University of Florida, Georgia Tech, and the University of Maryland are among the 300 institutions that use Honorlock for exam proctoring. When a school signs up to use Honorlock, all of its students come with it. Honorlock surpassed the 1 million-student mark last year, and is planning on onboarding another million students this year (for context, the market for higher-education students is about 20 million students, according to Hemlepp).

“Trying to create a testing environment that’s really supportive of all students and that de-escalation was something that was very differentiating,” Amit Patel, managing director of Owl Ventures, said in an interview. “The varieties of universities and higher-ed institutions really appreciated that fact.”

The past year or so has put edtech in particular in the spotlight, as schools have quickly had to adjust to remote learning. And for testing, that means figuring out ways to securely administer exams remotely. 

For Honorlock, that meant revenue grew 1,000 percent year over year as schools turned to the system for exam proctoring. The company added about 70 employees last year, reaching more than 100 employees total, and is planning on hiring another 70 or so employees this year. 

With the new funding, Honorlock plans on investing in its talent, technology, and strategy, according to Hemlepp, along with its go-to-market strategy. The company is also looking to expand its presence in the corporate space — which it’s already entered — to provide remote proctoring services for exams such as real estate licensing exams.

The new round brings Honorlock’s total funding to nearly $40 million. The company last raised money with an $11.5 million Series A led by Defy Partners in March 2020.

Tess Mitchell

Tess has 20+ years of experience heading up corporate marketing teams in healthcare and higher education. She is passionate about thinking differently to lead teams to discover new and innovative ways to drive positive outcomes.

Honorlock raises $25M as demand for remote learning grows

Owl Ventures led Honorlock’s Series B funding round which included Defy Partners

BOCA RATON, Fla. (April 27, 2021) – Honorlock, an authentication and academic integrity platform, announced it has raised $25 million Series B funding led by Owl Ventures with participation from Defy Partners, Arsenal Growth and existing investors to further accelerate growth and enter new markets. 

Just one year ago, Honorlock raised $11.5 million Series A funding to accelerate technology investments and talent aimed at supporting its quick ascent to exclusively serve top higher education institutions across the world.  

“The pandemic highlighted an existing need for remote proctoring that honors and supports the test-taker experience while protecting the integrity of learning institutions. The team at Honorlock is committed to creating a non-invasive and equalizing environment for all,” said Michael Hemlepp, CEO, Honorlock. “We appreciate the significant support of Owl Ventures, Defy and others who believe in the need to drive innovation and integrity in the ed-tech industry.” 

Honorlock’s AI plus human-touch proctoring platform enables academic institutions and organizations that provide customer and partner education to offer remote assessments while protecting exam integrity and creating a fair and equitable environment for learners. Demand accelerated during the pandemic when schools and businesses closed their doors and remote learning became the new norm for college students and workers seeking professional development and certifications.

“Academic institutions are in the process of a much-needed tech revolution, and it’s happening fast,” said Amit Patel, managing director at Owl Ventures. “Honorlock is helping move education forward by solving some of the most complex challenges schools face when building an effective and fair remote-learning infrastructure. The opportunity to be at the forefront of this shift to remote access is big, and we believe in this team’s ability and passion to lead the way.” 

“We’ve seen Honorlock evolve from inception to become the dominant leader in the academic market, and we’re excited about its trajectory within the corporate market,” said Neil Sequeira, co-founder and partner at Defy Partners. “Honorlock’s mission to protect exam integrity and focus on the test-taker’s experience, at a time when this is greatly needed, resonates with the wider market need for a platform supporting exams, certifications and corporate testing. The post-pandemic market for continued remote learning is accelerating and Honorlock is in the ideal position to serve the fast-growing market.”

Honorlock’s cloud-based proctored testing system integrates with learning management platforms and is designed around integrity, usability and ease of management. Customers include University of Wisconsin, University of Florida, Georgia Institution of Technology and Texas A&M, among many others. 

About Honorlock

Honorlock is revolutionizing the way academic and enterprise institutions enable equity in online courses and exams. Our purpose is to uphold honesty and integrity. We focus on reaffirming the trust we have in students while assuring integrity for the institution, each instructor’s knowledge and value, and the exams themselves. 

About Owl Ventures

Owl Ventures is the largest venture capital fund in the world focused on the education technology market with over $1.3 billion in assets under management. The Silicon Valley based firm invests in the world’s leading education technology companies across the education spectrum encompassing PreK-12, higher education and future of work (career mobility/professional learning). Owl Ventures has deep domain expertise and leverages a global network of Limited Partners, investors, and strategic partners to help entrepreneurs scale their businesses into transformative category leading companies.

About Defy Partners

Founded in 2016, Defy is a Silicon Valley based early stage venture capital firm. Defy was founded to invest in entrepreneurs and companies looking to solve complex problems. Defy’s focus is to help early stage companies mature and scale into companies ready for growth capital. The firm’s team has more than 50 years of venture experience, successful operating backgrounds and actively helps successful entrepreneurs grow companies from inception through exit.

Tess Mitchell

Tess has 20+ years of experience heading up corporate marketing teams in healthcare and higher education. She is passionate about thinking differently to lead teams to discover new and innovative ways to drive positive outcomes.

Rapid Shift to Online Education Helps Universities Cope in Uncertain Times

Imagine what would have happened to colleges and universities in 2020 without the online education technology to allow teaching and learning to continue as it did. OK, stop! It was painful enough for those who had never used such technology before but imagine a complete shutdown of all higher education that a similar pandemic would have caused just 10 or 15 years ago. 

Click below to get information about quickly implementing online proctoring if your institution is moving to online learning related to COVID.

Set Up Proctoring in 2 Days

The good news for students who want to learn and teachers who want to teach is that most schools were able to respond. Some did it seamlessly, many did it heroically, and they all did it during an unprecedented crisis that hit hard in March 2020  and kept presenting new challenges throughout the year. People who had never before heard the words “online proctored exam” became creative test builders or savvy online test takers within a month. While the uncertain times continue into the winter, even as the first vaccines are being administered, let’s take a look at how today’s online education technology has helped institutions cope with remote schooling.

Old Hands at Online Education

Many schools have offered online courses toward degree programs for the past five, 10, or 20 years. Even schools known for their in-person undergraduate and graduate programs, such as Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Southern California have offered online courses. 

Students from all over the world could take courses in those universities’ distance learning programs, which allowed the schools to expand their mission and—sometimes over the objections of those who feared that academic standards would suffer—enter a lucrative market. Locally, meanwhile, online courses could help traditional students catch up if, for example, they had to take a semester off for personal or financial reasons.

Transition-Ready

Schools that already invested in their own systems were better placed to convert their courses to an online environment, even if the majority of their faculty had never taught online before. To be sure, instructors had to put in an immense amount of work to learn new software and, in many cases, reconceptualize their courses for an online environment. The psychological toll may take years to work itself out, and, while digital transformation can’t be considered a panacea for all that ails higher education, the success stories from this era will certainly contribute to an expanded sense of what’s possible, both now and in the future.

Video Classrooms and Conferencing

As noted, in some schools, the capability to run courses online has been developing for some time, and the support of companies that provide online test proctoring services has also been growing. The ability for instructors to see and hear 25 or more students on-screen at once has become widespread, even if it was only encountered for the first time during the COVID-19 crisis. Students can ask questions of teaching assistants in real-time chat boxes and smaller numbers can meet in online “breakout rooms” for focused discussions and group work.

Many schools without their own dedicated online classroom platforms were able to adapt their video conferencing services that were not originally set up with universities in mind. These services were able to help in a pinch and also allowed instructors and tech staffers to learn what works and what needed to improve with a given interface and student experience as they planned for the future.

How One School Quickly Integrated Online Proctored Exams

When it came time for course assessments, particularly high stakes midterm and final exams, companies such as Honorlock stepped into the breach to help schools maintain academic integrity even as an exponentially greater number of students took web proctored exams for the first time.

Like many schools, Broward College had to react fast. As one of the United States’ largest community colleges, Broward serves approximately 67,000 students, many of whom are the first in their families to pursue their formal education beyond high school. To fulfill their promise to these students in the face of the pandemic, Broward went full steam ahead to transition courses to a fully online environment. Naturally, they faced many of the same obstacles other schools did, as well as those unique to their community. They needed an online proctoring solution that would become a true resource, not an additional problem.

Data Privacy and Building Trust

Daphne St. Val, Senior Instructional Designer at Broward, noted that students were initially concerned about their privacy, but “little by little,” she said, they became comfortable: “When you install the [lightweight Chrome browser] extension, it’s not tapping into anything other than what you do during your screen sharing.”

Support for Faculty and Students

Many instructors and students struggled during the beginning of the pandemic due to the rushed learning curve associated with video-based courses and online test proctoring systems. In contrast, Honorlock users reported relief. “Having access to 24/7/365 support is huge, said St. Val. Especially during times like this when students may be taking exams at any time of day. You want them to have access to someone who can troubleshoot with them.”

Exclusive Online Proctoring Features You Can’t Get Anywhere Else

Three exclusive features that St. Val said particularly sets Honorlock apart from other online proctoring solutions are Live Pop-In™, Search and Destroy™, and Multi-Device Detection. In brief, our AI monitors each exam and only notifies our always-available human proctors when a possible violation of academic integrity (e.g., another voice in the room, a student getting up from the desk) has occurred. Meanwhile, our proprietary software searches the internet for unauthorized copies of the instructor’s test questions and issues copyright take-down orders from question-pool sites. We can also detect whether a student searches for test questions with a smartphone or tablet during the exam itself.

You can see more about Broward’s success story, and those of a range of other schools, here. 

Into the Future

As students take more and more classes online, we may look back on this pandemic nightmare as the beginning of a brighter future for instructors and students. A future that provides instructors and students with broader capabilities to teach and learn, offer classes, and remotely proctor exams to ensure student success.

Want to see Honorlock in action? Request a demo. 

SCHEDULE A DEMO

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Tess Mitchell

Tess has 20+ years of experience heading up corporate marketing teams in healthcare and higher education. She is passionate about thinking differently to lead teams to discover new and innovative ways to drive positive outcomes.

Setting Faculty Goals for 2021 with Online Proctoring

How to prepare for online exams

Whether you’re new to online exams or accustomed to them as well as taking a proctored exam, use these best practices for online exam taking to help you prepare.

5 things to keep in mind to help you prepare for an online exam

#1 Study! One of the most important tips for online test preparation is to make sure you’ve thoroughly studied for the exam itself. The exam will be structured by your instructor so you can best demonstrate your ability to apply and synthesize what you have been learning in the class.

#2 Make sure that your computer and webcam are working properly, and do our Simple Single-Click System Check to ensure you have the proper browser and meet minimum OS requirements [click here for our system check then scroll down to “Simple Single-Click System Check”]. When you’re taking a proctored exam, it’s best to make sure that the room where you’re taking the test is well-lit, clear of clutter, and that no other people are present. 

#3 Log into your school’s Learning Management System and install the lightweight Honorlock extension on your Google Chrome browser, or Click Here to install. It takes just a few moments to install, is active only within your LMS environment, and takes just a few seconds to delete, if you so choose, following your proctored exam.

#4 While Honorlock does not require a photo ID, many academic institutions do require a photo ID.

If so, you’ll likely need to have an ID accessible (e.g. your school ID, driver’s license or passport) 

Federal law requires that schools guarantee that you and the person registered in the course (and therefore taking the exam) are one and the same. When it comes to ID verification, Honorlock’s online proctoring software provides the easiest experience that you’ll find and it only takes about a minute.

#5 If your instructor requires it, you’ll perform a 360-degree camera sweep of your testing area so that our online proctors can check that you have don’t have prohibited materials nearby.

Do I have to make an appointment to take my online proctored exam?

You do not have to make an appointment to take your online proctored exam with Honorlock. We appreciate how hard it can be to schedule exams around your busy schedule. Honorlock was built by students to better serve students, and all of our online proctoring services are meant to be as convenient for you as possible. 

You don’t have to pick a time in advance and won’t have any fees to pay should you change your plans—even at the last minute. You get to take your proctored online exam on-demand, when you are best prepared to take it, any time day or night, so long as you meet your instructor’s deadlines.

What is going to happen during the proctored online exam?

Once your identity is verified and your environment is approved, you can focus on demonstrating the results of all that hard work you have been doing when studying. That’s basically it. Learn more here.

96% of students taking their proctored online exam with Honorlock will experience no other intervention from our remote proctors. Our proctors will interrupt you via chat only if our AI proctoring software flags a possible instance of academic dishonesty. But if you are one of the few that interacts with our remote proctors, don’t panic. The proctors are there to help, not penalize. They will inquire about the situation and make suggestions to prevent an additional “pop-in” intervention. 

What actions could generate a flag or a live proctor to pop into your online exam session?

There are many misconceptions about what causes a flag or a live proctor to pop into your online exam session. Natural head movements while thinking about an exam question, your dog barking at your neighbors, or your cat jumping on your desk will not automatically trigger a flag. Our AI has been trained to ignore those things.

Here are lists of things that will typically be flagged in a proctored exam – listed by high, medium and low-risk incidents.

Potential high-risk situations that our AI will recognize and flag for our human proctors so that they can pop in to find out what is actually going on include:

  • If you move completely out of the view of your webcam
  • If something obstructs your webcam
  • Use of an unauthorized search engine
  • Use of a secondary device, such as a smartphone or tablet
  • The appearance or sound of the voice of someone else in the room with you
  • Use of voice assistance software (Siri, Alexa, Bixby, etc.)
  • Violation of your instructor’s guidelines

Medium-risk situations that may trigger a Live Pop-In from a remote proctor include:

  • A less than appropriate workspace (i.e. not at a desk or table—if you prefer a couch or a chair for comfort or health reasons, that’s fine, but the proctor may check) 
  • Headphones or earphones
  • If you set up your webcam or move so that you are partially out of view
  • A secondary device in view (it’s best to keep your other devices in a different room)
  • An incomplete room scan (not 360 degrees, desk not shown, or materials not shown)

Low-risk situations that are less likely to be a problem but may generate a flag include:

  • Background noise
  • iMessage notifications on a Mac
  • Insufficient lighting
  • Ongoing conversation unrelated to exam content

Know that Honorlock online proctoring uses a combination of AI technology and human proctors because we understand that things do happen. If you accidentally look off into the distance or your roommate walks into the room unannounced, our live remote proctor may pop in to assess the situation, make sure there isn’t an academic violation, and help you get back on track with your online exam. Your instructor will also be able to review the recording of your online proctored exam to review any flagged incidents. Instructors make the final assessment as to whether an incident is a violation that requires further action.

We hope you find the lists above to be helpful, as we exist to help you succeed. You, your peers, your university, and society as a whole all benefit from a fair system of academic assessment, and we at Honorlock are proud to provide the least intrusive and most convenient online exam proctoring experience. 

Use this tutorial to learn more about how proctored exams work and what you can expect? 

Sign up below for more tips and best practices for online exams

Want to see Honorlock in action? Schedule a demo.

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Tess Mitchell

Tess has 20+ years of experience heading up corporate marketing teams in healthcare and higher education. She is passionate about thinking differently to lead teams to discover new and innovative ways to drive positive outcomes.

Best Practices for Online Exam Takers

At Honorlock, we pride ourselves on helping educational institutions preserve their academic integrity. Most of you, whether students, faculty, or administrators, will be aware of this phrase. Some of you will have thought deeply about academic integrity, while others may think of it only in passing. A few may have come into stark awareness of academic integrity only after being accused of violating it on an examination or a written assignment for a class. In part because of those circumstances, perhaps too much discussion of and emotion about academic integrity centers upon negative behaviors and instances when individuals fall short of the ideal.

In contrast, the International Center for Academic Integrity (ICAI) exists to focus on and champion the positive values associated with our intrinsic drive to do good, not just do well. These fundamental values, honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage, each warrant a look when considering what remote proctoring solution a school administrator chooses, how faculty members create assessments for their students (and indeed how they produce their own research), and how students approach the pursuit of their degrees and their education. They also play an integral role in how Honorlock operates as a company.

Honesty

Honesty is not just the proverbial best policy, ICAI notes that it’s an “indispensable foundation of teaching, learning, research, and service, and a necessary prerequisite” for the five other fundamental values. Institutions need to be clear that dishonest behaviors in an academic community are unacceptable.

Honesty and honor are closely related. The temptation to take short cuts during one’s academic career can be overwhelming, and whether it’s due to stress or disconnection, or “nobody will know,” an extensive and recent ICAI academic integrity survey paints a troubling picture of the percentage of students who admit to betraying their honor at some time or another when completing an assignment.

What can remote proctoring software do in this environment? The answer is help schools limit the temptation, by providing effective deterrence for those who may be tempted to put short-term gains ahead of their own, and their institution’s academic integrity. 

Trust

Once honesty is established, trust can follow. According to ICAI, faculty promote trust by setting “clear guidelines for assignments and for evaluating student work.” Students promote trust by preparing “honest, thoughtful, and genuine” work. Schools develop trust by setting “clear and consistent academic standards” and then applying those standards “unfailingly and fairly.” When the members of the academic community can be trusted to act with integrity, the wider society “can believe in the value and meaning of scholarly research, teaching, and degrees.” 

To verify the worthiness of the trust placed in our educational institutions, the federal government requires that schools confirm that each student taking a distance course and being awarded the credit is the same student enrolled in the course and doing the work. Honorlock’s remote proctoring system contributes to this general trust with the quickest and easiest test-taker ID verification process available. Meanwhile, students and institutions can trust that Honorlock will never sell or monetize your student data.

Fairness

Humans have a compelling need to feel that they have been treated fairly. “Life” may not be fair, and, in a competitive economy, things may not always break our way, but we still demand that others deal fairly with us. Our educational communities can be fortified by “predictability, transparency, and clear, reasonable expectations,” as ICAI puts it.

Students want their grade evaluations to be impartial and accurate, and fairness in this sense is what builds trust between them and their instructors and institutions. Honest students need to feel confident that their peers are not gaining an unfair advantage by acting dishonestly. For courses with high stakes online midterms and final exams, Honorlock’s AI, backed up by live human proctors, performs a vital service in ensuring fairness for all.

Respect

“Respect in academic communities,” ICAI reminds us, “is reciprocal and requires showing respect for oneself as well as others.” For the individual, respect means “facing challenges with integrity.” For the group, making sure each member both shows and feels respect is everyone’s responsibility.

When students behave with integrity, they demonstrate respect to themselves, their peers, their families, their teachers, and their school. They also show respect to the alumni who have come before them and whose ranks they hope to proudly join having maintained their school’s good name.

Honorlock was founded by students, and we respect the commitment that everyone in the academic community makes for maintaining academic integrity with our 24/7/365 support. We appreciate our opportunity to contribute to an environment that fosters respect by ensuring that remotely proctored exams are conducted both conveniently and fairly. 

Responsibility

Here is the ICAI on responsibility:

Academic communities of integrity rest upon foundations of personal accountability coupled with the willingness of individuals and groups to lead by example, uphold mutually agreed-upon standards, and take action when they encounter wrongdoing.

Schools are taking on a wider responsibility for the education of the population by expanding their reach through distance learning, and part of that responsibility is ensuring the fairness of their remotely proctored assessments. Schools that successfully shoulder this responsibility engender credibility with the world at large. 

Courage

ICAI highlights courage last because it is less a value than a “quality or capacity” that allows us to act according to our values. Courage is “an element of character” that helps students hold themselves and each other to the highest standards. 

It takes courage to act with integrity when fear creeps in, or when stress derails us. But, in a way similar to intellectual capacity, ICAI concludes, “courage can only develop in environments where it is tested.” 

Protect Academic Integrity with Honorlock’s Remote Proctoring Software

Take courage as you make the most of your experience as a student, faculty member, or administrator. If you’d like to learn more about how Honorlock’s remote proctoring software can help preserve your institution’s values of maintaining academic integrity, request a demo. 

SCHEDULE A DEMO

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Tess Mitchell

Tess has 20+ years of experience heading up corporate marketing teams in healthcare and higher education. She is passionate about thinking differently to lead teams to discover new and innovative ways to drive positive outcomes.

Press Release: Alabama Community College System (ACCS) Selects Honorlock to Protect Academic Integrity

All 24 colleges in the ACCS will proctor exams using Honorlock to provide its 170,000 students with a fair and consistent exam experience.

BOCA RATON, Fla, November 19, 2020 – Honorlock, a leading online proctoring solution provider, today announced that the Alabama Community College System (ACCS) has selected the company’s blended AI and live proctoring service for all 24 schools in the system. With the multi-year, system-wide contract, Honorlock will provide student identity verification, automated and live proctoring, actionable reporting and protect against the unauthorized use of exam content for Alabama’s 170,000 community and technical college students.

“Student success is our top priority at the Alabama Community College System and it was important for us to select a proctoring solution that would ensure a fair and consistent student experience across the state,” said ACCS Chancellor Jimmy H. Baker.  “Implementing Honorlock at our 24 colleges will raise the bar on the student experience and provide both students and faculty with the tools to improve student outcomes.” 

The ACCS underwent a rigorous vetting process including Request For Proposal (RFP) for which Honorlock was selected.  The three-year contract has an option to extend two additional years. 

“We’re honored to be selected by the ACCS to bring our student-centric academic integrity solution to all 24 Alabama colleges,” said Michael Hemlepp, Honorlock CEO. “At Honorlock we’ve dedicated ourselves to taking the technical online proctoring experience and making it human. Our goal is to make the exam experience easier, faster and less stressful for the student and instructor while ensuring academic integrity to protect the institutions’ reputation. 

Honorlock is a cloud-based proctoring system that integrates with a school’s learning management system and is designed around usability and ease of use. Clients include the top-ranked University of Florida, the University of Maryland and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

About Honorlock

Honorlock is a leading EdTech company, serving higher education, K-12 and corporate clients worldwide. Our exam integrity platform builds confidence for institutions, instructors and students. By making the technical online proctoring experience human, we make test-taking less stressful, save everyone time and hassle, and protect integrity so our users can focus on achieving their goals. honorlock.com

Tess Mitchell

Tess has 20+ years of experience heading up corporate marketing teams in healthcare and higher education. She is passionate about thinking differently to lead teams to discover new and innovative ways to drive positive outcomes.

Is a VPAT Enough? How to Reduce Accessibility Barriers for Students, Faculty and Staff

If you or your institution want to know whether a product such as online exam proctoring software is accessible for those with disabilities, either before or after you’ve settled on a purchase, you’ll be likely to be reviewing a VPAT.

The question will arise, “Who should be reviewing a VPAT?” Note that reviewing and evaluating accessibility documentation requires familiarity with accessibility standards and barriers. The expectation that this responsibility belongs solely to procurement staff, or to the faculty, or to the disability services office may lead to greater institutional problems.

What is a VPAT?

The Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) is a document from a Washington-based policy group that provides a standardized reporting format for product accessibility conformance. The document format undergoes small modifications based on feedback from industry partners.

When the VPAT is used to report accessibility conformance of a product, the completed document is known as the Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR). The term ACR is more correct and represents the completed document. However, the term VPAT is commonly used to represent an ACR.

Just Compliance?

An institution of higher education may review products for conformance with accessibility standards, such as the Revised 508 Standards, as part of its obligation to ensure accessibility of information and communication technology, also known as ICT.  Two crucial steps towards ensuring accessibility compliance include:

  • Working with vendors to remove accessibility barriers identified in products, and
  • Developing plans to “Provide individuals with disabilities access to and use of information and data by alternate means that meets identified needs” (E202.7.2 Alternative Means, Revised 508 Standards).

Keep in mind, developing alternate access plans is about removing barriers that could otherwise cause delays for students, faculty, and staff with disabilities, as well as compliance. You can see how important these plans are when it comes to remote exam proctoring solutions. The last thing you want is to create obstacles or delays at exam time.

What is an Alternate Access Plan?

An Equally Effective Alternate Access Plan (EEAAP) describes what an institution will do when an ICT product does not meet its minimum accessibility standards. An EEAAP identifies how access to the product will be provided when a person with a disability were to use it by answering the following questions:

  • What is the access barrier?
  • Who is affected by the access barrier?
  • Who is responsible for the plan?
  • How will equal access be provided?
  • What resources are necessary to provide equal access?
  • When will the vendor remove the access barriers?

It is important to note that EEAAPs are general plans. Any qualified individual with a disability still has the same rights to request individualized accommodations through the institution’s reasonable accommodation process beyond what the EEAAP proposes. 

Consider a product with videos that are not captioned. The EEAAP may include a stipulation for using institutional resources to caption the current set of videos while the vendor builds in captioned videos to the next product update. This provision does not mean that an individual might not still request ASL interpreting when using the product.

College of the Desert’s EEAAP (opens PDF) and San Francisco State University’s EEAAP (opens PDF) are just two helpful examples of EEAAPs in use at colleges and universities around the country.

Accessibility Reviews

There are several options for accessibility reviews. The type of review for evaluating accessibility used by an institution may depend on the availability of information and institutional resources. Each review process provides different information and has pros and cons.  In all cases, incomplete or contradictory information will lead to questions for the vendor and may identify the need for alternate access plans.

Accessibility reviews include:

  1. VPAT review and taking the information at face value
  2. Product testing by staff familiar with accessibility
  3. Vendor product demonstration
  4. In-house product accessibility evaluation
  5. Third-party product accessibility audit
  6. User testing of a product by various users of assistive technology

You won’t be surprised that taking the information in a VPAT at face value when it has been self-reported by a vendor may not be the most reliable or accurate method of evaluating accessibility for a product. Then again, doing so is probably the fastest way to review a product, at least initially.

A VPAT review could take a few hours. Contrast this with the several weeks it could take to conduct an in-depth evaluation of the product or to contract a third-party to evaluate the product. While such evaluations could result in more accurate information, depending on the product, there could also be delays for all users or delays in providing alternate access to users with disabilities.

What to Look for in a VPAT

Simply having a VPAT available for a product does not mean the document includes usable information. The information in a VPAT needs to be relevant to an institution’s accessibility conformance review process.

VPAT Editions

There are four editions of the VPAT.  When an institution has adopted the revised Section 508 standards as its minimum accessibility standards for ICT, it is important to review the Revised Section 508 Edition of the VPAT.  Otherwise, the product accessibility information may be incomplete.

For instance, Section 508 standards apply to hardware ICT as well as web content.  If the VPAT WCAG edition for web content is used to report the accessibility conformance of hardware, information describing how the ICT meets hardware standards would probably be missing.

VPAT Version

VPAT 2.4 is the current version. Prior to version 2.0, the information in the VPAT will not reference the revised Section 508 standards. Therefore, the information may be incomplete and difficult to match up with the tools used as part of an institution’s process of evaluating accessibility.

Date Completed

Web content, as well as software and hardware products, changes regularly.  The accessibility documentation should be updated to reflect product development.  The VPAT should therefore be a recent report, from at least within the last 12 months.

VPAT Evaluation Methods Used

The VPAT should identify the evaluation methods used to complete the report. It should answer the questions:

  • What automated tools were used?
  • What manual evaluation techniques were conducted?
  • What browsers and assistive technologies were used?
  • And by whom?

Remarks and Explanations

Vendors report a conformance level for each success criterion. If the conformance level is “Partially Supports” or “Does Not Support”, the remarks should identify:

  • The functions or features with accessibility barriers
  • How the product does not fully support the criterion
  • A roadmap for the vendor to remove the access barriers
  • If the criterion does not apply, an explanation as to why
  • If an accessible alternative is used, a description of it

The roadmap or timeframe from the vendor for removing the accessibility barriers is not included in the VPAT instructions for vendors, but rather, it is information that institutions need to include in alternate access plans as part of Section 508 compliance.

Accessibility Review Example

Let’s consider the first WCAG 2.0 level A success criterion, 1.1.1 Not-text Content.  The first part of 1.1.1 states “All non-text content that is presented to the user has a text alternative that serves the equivalent purpose,” then lists specific exceptions. 

When a success criterion is complex, it helps to ask several questions that address all the requirements for the success criterion. This is part of the approach used by the Section 508 Trusted Tester Conformance Test Process Version 5.

  • Question: Does the accessible name and accessible description for a meaningful image provide an equivalent description of the image?

An equivalent description for a meaningful image could be provided in alt text for images or in other types of text alternatives.  For example, a link to an accessible table of data might be provided for a chart.  It is important to note that only a human can determine whether the description is equivalent.

  • Vendor’s answer: Supports; The product uses standard HTML and WAI-ARIA techniques to provide text equivalents for all visual elements. This includes the attributes “alt”, “aria-label”, and “aria-describedby”.

Results

The vendor states that text equivalents are provided for all visual elements. However, the vendor does not state how it was determined that the text descriptions are equivalent for meaningful images.

It would be helpful if the vendor described the process that is used to ensure text descriptions are equivalent.  Otherwise, images could have file names or nonsense text and still pass a test with an automated tool. 

In this case, the vendor states the product conformance level is “Supports” for the success criterion. Taken at face value, the statement indicates no need for alternate access. However, if the VPAT Evaluation Methods Used does not give the reviewer confidence in the vendor’s process, the reviewer might ask the vendor for clarification.

Conclusion

If this VPAT is being reviewed by taking the information reported by the vendor at face value, even though the conformance level for the success criterion reported by the vendor is “Supports,” alternate access may be needed. It will depend on what additional information the vendor provides or if other testing identifies accessibility barriers related to this success criterion.

Disability Justice

With most technology there will usually still be a need for accommodations for those with disabilities. This reality does not have to be a barrier for institutions as they meet their accessibility goals and obligations. Instead, each time an institution reviews ICT, including web proctoring software, that review can be a beneficial part of a collective effort to reduce accessibility barriers for students, faculty, and staff anywhere the product is used.

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This blog post was written by Nicolás M. Crisosto, Accessibility Specialist.

Tess Mitchell

Tess has 20+ years of experience heading up corporate marketing teams in healthcare and higher education. She is passionate about thinking differently to lead teams to discover new and innovative ways to drive positive outcomes.