How to Assign Helperbird Accommodations to Students for Testing

Students on an IEP or a 504 plan do not all need the same tools. This page is for the admin deciding which Helperbird features each group of students gets, and pushing that decision from the Google Admin Console.

It assumes Helperbird already runs on the devices. If your question is whether Helperbird survives a locked quiz at all, that is how to use Helperbird in locked mode on Chromebooks.

Before You Start

• Super Admin or Organizational Unit Admin access to admin.google.com (opens in a new tab).
• Helperbird force-installed for those students. See force install Helperbird.
• Your subscription key pushed as subKey with isAdminControl set to true. See how to set Helperbird JSON policy in Google Admin.

A group with no subscription key is on Helperbird Free, which changes what you can promise. Word prediction, Voice typing, Spell check and Screenshot Reader are Pro. Text to speech, Dictionary, Translate and Immersive Reader work on Free, though Immersive Reader stops at 2,000 characters.

Group by Accommodation, Not by Student

Policy is set per organizational unit, so the unit of work is the group, not the child. Create one child OU per accommodation pattern, move students into it, and give that OU its own JSON policy.

1. Create a child OU for each pattern, for example Reading Support, ELL Support, Writing Support. See how to set up a child organizational unit for Helperbird.
2. Move students in based on their plan.
3. Set that OU's JSON policy.

Three or four groups covers most schools. One OU per student is possible and becomes a maintenance problem long before it becomes useful. If a handful of students do not fit the pattern, target them directly instead: set the policy for a user group or for an individual user.

The Two Keys That Decide What a Group Sees

Helperbird's policy does not list what to switch on. It lists what to take away. Everything the student's license allows is available unless you name it.

Both are ignored unless isAdminControl is true. What that key does, and what turning it off costs you, is on how to use Helperbird in locked mode on Chromebooks.

The codes themselves live on how to disable Helperbird features using JSON policy, which owns the full tables. Feature names below are the names a student sees in the popup. The policy takes the code, never the name.

Example Accommodation Groups

Starting points, not a standard. The plan is the standard.

Reading Support

Leave available: Text to speech, Font, one of the rulers, Immersive Reader, Color overlay. Of the 32 fonts that ship, OpenDyslexic, Atkinson Hyperlegible and Andika are the three schools ask for most.

Worth removing during assessments: Word prediction, Voice typing, Translate. Each helps with reading tasks and gets awkward when the task is being assessed.

ELL and Translation Support

Leave available: Translate, Dictionary, Immersive Reader, Text to speech.

One decision to make deliberately. Translate page opens Google Translate in a new tab, which navigates the student off the paper. Translating selected text stays inside Helperbird.

Writing Support

Leave available: Word prediction, Voice typing, Spell check, Text to speech.

Assessment Only

A minimal set for standardized testing: Text to speech, one ruler, Color overlay. Everything else goes in disabledFeatures.

Codes That Cover More Than Their Name

A few codes are broader or narrower than they read, and these are the ones support tickets come from.

Do not spend time on SpeedReadingOptions, TextStroke, PrintTool or ParagraphColumns. Speed reading, Text stroke, Print and Paragraph columns have been removed from Helperbird, so those codes have nothing left to switch off. Zoom and Magnifier have not been removed and still respond to policy.

Policy Decides What Exists, Students Still Turn It On

Your policy sets what a student is allowed to have. Somebody still has to press the toggles.

Helperbird has profiles for that. A student opens the Helperbird settings page, picks a profile such as Dyslexia, ADHD & Focus or Low Vision, and the whole set turns on at once. Anything you disabled stays gone, and on a free account the Pro parts are stripped out of the profile rather than shown locked. See how to use accessibility profiles in Helperbird.

Getting students to set their profile in the week before an assessment is worth more than any policy you write. The steps they follow on the day are on how to use Helperbird during Google Forms locked quizzes.

Troubleshooting

A student has features nobody assigned them. Child OUs inherit the parent policy unless you override it. Check what the parent pushes.

Nothing on your list is disabled. disableFeatures is almost certainly false, or isAdminControl is.

A student in the right OU has none of their features. The device probably has no subscription key. That is the licensing path, not the feature path. See how to resync your Helperbird subscription.

You disabled something and it is still there. The code is likely wrong or misspelled. Codes are case sensitive.

Validate Your Policy

Before you push it, run it through the JSON Policy Validator to check the syntax and confirm every feature code is real.

Related Guides

• How to Use Helperbird in Locked Mode on Chromebooks
• How to Use Helperbird During Google Forms Locked Quizzes
• How to Disable Helperbird Features Using JSON Policy
• How to Set Up a Child Organizational Unit for Helperbird
• Set Helperbird JSON Policy for a User Group
• Set Helperbird JSON Policy for an Individual User
• How to Use Accessibility Profiles in Helperbird
• How to Deploy Helperbird to Your School