While it’s now routine for higher-education
institutions to provide physical accommodations to ensure disabled access, such
as ramps and automatic doors, new barriers are being found in digital course
materials, websites, and learning platforms, leading to lawsuits brought by
disability groups and remedial actions ordered by the Department of Justice
(DOJ).
Advocacy groups are working to ensure that the
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and similar antidiscrimination laws are
interpreted to apply to learning technologies that didn’t exist when the law
was signed more than a quarter century ago. They’re also hoping for movement on
proposed new DOJ rules governing how all public entities, including public
colleges and universities, offer their services online.
The University of California, Berkeley, was
found in violation of the ADA because much of its free audio and video content posted
online lacked captions that would make it accessible to deaf students. Last
month, Miami University, Oxford, OH, agreed to retool its accessibility
policies as part of a settlement with a blind student who’d sued over
inaccessible course materials and a lack of trained assistants.
Those and similar cases exemplify what the
National Federation of the Blind characterizes as a school-by-school approach
to protecting students with disabilities from being left behind by the
digitization of higher ed.
