Breakout Room 3 Notes

Language Access Work Group

Notes from 

Meeting 3 Breakout Room 3

August 22, 2023

Breakout Room 3 Participants                                       Breakout Room 3 Facilitator

Patricia Alonzo                                                                   Sharon Armstrong

Milena Calderari-Waldron

Nadia Damchii

Agata Ianturina

Cristina Labra

Leroy Mould

Elsie Rodriguez-Paz

Michael Woo

 

Homework: Please share what would you like to see in a draft recommendation, or what have you already shared in a draft recommendation, regarding the first two main components of the Preliminary Elements of Medical Interpreter Testing and Certification information sheet: testing entities and technology.

 

  • One concern is the affordability/price of testing for interpreters that would like to get credentials.

  • Pull real time reports to see where the languages are that folks are struggling with, such as oral or written exams. This would help with recruitment and identify where training needs to be implemented. At Labor and Industry, they are looking at allowing their own staff to become certified interpreters so they can be used within the agency as interpreters. This type of information will be helpful for them to expand. Identify areas of concern and pockets that need to be addressed. Are there certain languages and types of exams that need to address pass/fail rate of exams?

  • Online testing is a better option because it is accessible to all. All testing vendors should have good technical support for all candidates. Online testing should be convenient and easy to navigate since not everyone already understands how to use the online technical process. Provide good support for all candidates, proctors, and graders.

  • The national board used an online vendor for remote testing and performed online tests. Both oral and written had verifying mechanisms in place that the proctors used for identifying candidates.

  • Have mechanisms in place to prevent the temptation of cheating. Have different algorithms in place. One vendor, known as Owl, is one proctor platform to use. There are other testing platforms to be considered. These can tie into the verification part and the accessibility part online, and they offer tutorials for candidates when they are going to be testing. It could be up to the organization to put together a quick multilingual tutorial video. The onus would be on the online platform to update their security. This would alleviate some pressure from DSHS.

  • Potential testing candidates should receive instructions in their own language, rather than English. This is something that can be done since Washington has a high indigenous population.

  • When customers call in for support issues, such as navigating testing sites, is tech support provided in an accessible way for languages other than English? At ProctorU, the language default is always English. Not aware of assistance in any language other than English.

  • As a reminder, the purpose of this language work group is also for us to come up with some names of testing entities or standard directions.

  • For the technologies, we want to make sure that the technologies we use are compliant with the web content accessibly guidelines WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 2.1 AA. Sometimes when using vendors, they are not quite there.

  • NBCMI/CCHI (National Board of Certification for Interpreters/Certification Commission for Healthcare Interpreters) provide online, national testing for medical interpreters. If there are any other options, it is good to recommend.

  • Prometric is a vendor for onsite testing. During this work group’s last meeting, one of the comments was to deliver proctors to the more rural parts of Washington to administer exams. This is a great idea. Prometric has several testing sites throughout the state. For example, tests are administered to court interpreters in California in different cities, in alternate locations, sometimes even hotels. The tests are always one-on-one and recorded.

  • Whatever technology we select to use, we should have someone from WaTech (Washington Technology Solutions) ensure that each program is compliant with accessibility and policies.

  • Something to consider: for written exam test scores, depending on what is offered by the test platform administrator, they can give you a preliminary score within 24 hours and have a final score within 48 - 72 hours, depending on the verbiage in the contract.