Instrument library
Surveys built as real forms, tested with screen readers, with stable question identifiers so results pool across networks and years.
The instruments
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Community Needs Survey
A short survey, about five minutes, that asks people with disabilities, their families and the people who support them which Independent Living services they need but are not getting, how hard help is to find, and where they live. It gives a Statewide Independent Living Council or a Center for Independent Living a county-level picture of unmet need for a State Plan for Independent Living.
Try the Community Needs Survey online (preview, nothing is saved)
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Consumer Satisfaction Survey
A survey for people who have received services from a Center for Independent Living in the past twelve months. It asks what they received, whether they were treated as the person in charge of their own goals, what changed for them, and what the center could do better. It uses one agreement scale throughout so results pool across centers and years, and it gives a SILC the consumer satisfaction results its State Plan commits to reviewing.
Try the Consumer Satisfaction Survey online (preview, nothing is saved)
How every instrument here is built
- One question per screen online, one long form without JavaScript. The page is a complete, labelled HTML form first. Script turns it into steps with a progress indicator and an error summary. Turn script off and it still works.
- No tables of radio buttons. Rating grids are the least navigable thing in most surveys. Each statement is its own labelled group with the same scale, so a screen reader user hears the statement, then the choices.
- Labels are names; explanations are hints. "Rights" is the label. "Help knowing and speaking up for my rights" is a description linked to it. A screen reader reads the name first and the explanation after, not a sixty-word label.
- Required is the exception. Only consent, the first question and (in the needs survey) county are required. Everything else may be skipped, and a partly answered survey still counts.
- Contact details are kept apart from answers. They live in a separate table and are exported only on a separate follow-up list. A respondent can say hard things without their name beside them.
- One wording for print and screen. The plain-text master is generated from the same definition as the online form, with the answer values in brackets for whoever keys paper responses. A translated or brailled copy made from that file pools with the online data because the values are identical.
- Stable identifiers. Every question and option has an id that never changes meaning. A new version adds ids; it never reuses one. See the question bank.
Formats
- Online preview
- The instrument as respondents will meet it, with a permanent band saying answers are not saved. Use it to review wording, to test with your own screen reader, and to show your committee.
- Hosted collection
- The same instrument at an address for your state, reached through coded links we issue for your organization. Responses go to a database your organization alone can export. How it works.
- Plain-text master
- A numbered text file for large print, braille transcription, translation and telephone administration. Each instrument page links to it.
What "tested" means here
Every page passes an automated structure check and axe-core before it is published, and the built pages are walked in a browser for contrast, focus visibility and reflow at 320 pixels. That is the floor. Before an instrument is marked as screen-reader tested on its page, a person who uses a screen reader every day has worked through it with a task list and we have fixed what they found. The instrument page says which of those has happened.