Curious, what advanced topics would rely on writing? I can see where writing is good for testing some areas, but I don't see it tied to the core subject learning.
Some come to writing control late due to vision issues (as my son) or pure asynchrony and some never cross the line to mastery (such as myself, though I've always drawn very well.) People/kids tending towards dysgraphia have an additional issue of cognitive load, where it takes a lot of thought to write somewhat neatly and that can undercut some complex processing.
Without a computer, then verbal testing or scribing might be options. Can't imagine how much more attention my DS7 would take without the computer.
