Digiexam: accessibility support for every student, on every device

Digiexam is a digital exam platform. Teachers design the content, students open the application on whatever device they use in class, and they take their exam, assessment or quiz there.

It is also security software. While an assessment is running, Digiexam blocks the processes and services that could give a student access to resources they are not supposed to have. That side of the product has to work on Windows, macOS, Chromebooks and iPads alike.

The student base runs from children of eight or nine all the way up to professional education. Most users are in K12 through upper secondary, and the platform is also used by colleges and universities. Sweden is the largest single market at around 40% of the customer base, with the rest spread across the world.

WProofreader is the spell check inside that exam environment, offered to students as an accessibility tool.

What Digiexam needed

Spell check on this platform is an accessibility feature, as well as a writing aid. It is there for students who are entitled to it, and whether a given student gets it is a decision the school makes, not the software.

"Schools in Europe are way ahead in terms of accessibility standards and what students are entitled to. Spell check and grammar check are high up on the list. If you don’t have those, you can’t be considered for tender processes."

So Digiexam needed a proofreader that could:

• work the same way on Windows, macOS, Chromebooks and iPads, from a single integration
• run as a stable service, with nothing to rebuild or re-verify every time the application ships an update
• be switched on and off per student, from the exam settings the teacher already uses

It also had to fit the text editor Digiexam had already built on, without a rewrite.

Challenge

Before this, Digiexam built the accessibility features natively, once per operating system.

That is as expensive as it sounds, though the cost was not really money. It was people. Native functionality on four platforms means a specialist who knows the Windows environment, another for macOS, another for iPads and another for Chromebooks, all maintained in parallel.

The release cycle made it worse. Because the application is security software, it updates at least once a month and often more. Every one of those updates raised the same question four times over: is the native spell check still working in this environment, or did something break?

That turned into a straightforward resourcing decision. Was it worth putting that much developer time and energy into building and re-checking these functions, or would it be better to have one service that simply runs, where the only thing the team needs to know is that it is online and everything is fine?

Solution

WProofreader worked with the text editor Digiexam was already using, so it went straight in rather than forcing a rebuild, and the team could configure it in detail from there.

Here is how it works today. A teacher logs in, opens their content and designs an exam. In the exam settings, there is an accessibility tools section, and that is where they choose whether spell check is available for all students, for selected students only, or for nobody.

That setting drives everything downstream. Teachers, administrators and the student health team can allow the service for a particular student, and when that student logs in, spell check is simply on for them. They do not have to find it or enable it.

Benefits

One integration instead of four

WProofreader covers every device Digiexam supports from a single integration. No native build per operating system, and no specialist needed for each environment.

Nothing to re-verify on every release

The application still updates at least monthly. The spell check is no longer part of what has to be checked when it does. It runs as a service, and the team can see at a glance that it is up.

"The rest of the year, everything is smooth. It just runs and we don’t have to think about it."

Accessibility the school controls

Spell check is allowed per student, by the people who should be making that call. It works the way an accessibility tool is supposed to: available to the students entitled to it, on by default for them, invisible to everyone else. That matters to Digiexam’s customers, some of whom follow WCAG closely.

Intuitive interface

One toggle, set by the teacher, and the student sees the tool without doing anything. Digiexam always wants spell check available to the students who are allowed it, and the current setup means it always is.

Conclusion

WProofreader now provides spell check across the whole Digiexam platform, on every device it supports, controlled from the exam settings teachers already work in. One integration replaced four native builds, and the monthly release cycle no longer carries the risk of quietly breaking an accessibility feature on one operating system.

What the team would like next

"It’s not that people are using it less, it’s that people are using it much, much more."

Usage is not flat and it is not falling. It is going up, sharply. The next thing on Digiexam’s list is confidence at peak: knowing the service will hold when a whole country sits an exam on the same morning. And this is what WebSpellChecker is working on now.