Accommodation mappings
Testing centers can define accommodations that students may need during exams. Each one defines and names its accommodations independently (see the Accommodations guide), so the same real-world accommodation can be configured differently from one testing center to the next.
A federation bridges those differences by defining its own set of federation accommodations and letting each member map its accommodations to them. A mapping is a link between one federation accommodation and one of a member's accommodations.
Why mappings exist
A federation accommodation is a shared, canonical name for an accommodation that the whole federation recognizes — for example, Reduced Distraction (RD). Each member maps its own equivalent accommodation to that federation accommodation, even where it was named or abbreviated differently. The mappings establish how each member's accommodations correspond to the federation's shared accommodations, which is the foundation for handling accommodations consistently across the federation.
A few properties worth knowing:
- Mappings are per membership: they describe how one member's accommodations line up with the federation's, independently of every other member.
- A mapping is symmetric: the same link is shown on both the federation accommodation and the testing center accommodation, and it can be removed from either side.
- Mappings are many-to-many: a federation accommodation may map to several testing center accommodations, and a single testing center accommodation may map to several federation accommodations.
How mappings are used
Once federated reservations are enabled, mappings translate a student's accommodations along their reservation's path between two member testing centers (see Federations for home and serving centers). A home-center accommodation is matched to a federation accommodation through the home center's membership, and that federation accommodation is then matched to the serving-center accommodation through the serving center's membership.
This translation is best-effort: any home accommodation that does not map all the way through to a serving-center accommodation is still shown, under its original home-center name, so the student and staff can see what will not be provided — but an unmapped home accommodation does not by itself block a reservation option. Whether a serving reservation option meets the student's needs depends only on the mapped serving-center accommodations it can or cannot provide.
Managing federation accommodations
This must be done by a federation staff member with the Editor or Owner role.
Federation accommodations are managed from the federation's Accommodations page. As with a testing center's accommodations, each one has an abbreviation (e.g., "RD"), a name (e.g., "Reduced distraction"), and a description. From here you can add, rename, and remove the accommodations that members will map to.
The name, abbreviation, and description should store operational outcomes only: what member centers need to provide, coordinate, or communicate across the federation. Keeping these fields operational limits sensitive medical and disability information in PrairieTest. Leave out diagnoses, medical documentation, and narrative disability details when the federated workflow can be run without them; if a PrairieTest workflow truly requires additional details, include only the minimum needed for that workflow.
Editing mappings
Mappings can be edited from either side, and both views show the same links for a membership.
From the federation (requires a federation Editor or Owner):
- From the federation's Centers page, select a member to open its accommodation mapping page.
- The federation's accommodations are listed on the left and the testing center's accommodations on the right.
- Use Link accommodation on either side to add a mapping.
- Remove a mapping with the × on any of its link chips.
From the testing center (requires a testing center Exam Editor or Owner):
- From your testing center's Settings tab, go to the Federations tab and open the federation membership.
- The Accommodation mappings card shows the same two columns and supports the same add and remove actions.
Deleting accommodations
Mappings are tied to the accommodations on both sides, so removing either accommodation removes the mappings that reference it:
- Deleting a federation accommodation removes every mapping to it across the federation.
- Deleting a testing center accommodation removes that testing center's mappings to any federation accommodation.
In both cases the affected mappings are recorded in the audit log, and the delete confirmation warns you how many mappings will be removed.