Accessible ITems
Disability Advocates Delighted with Efforts on Broadband Reform
Disability organizations are delighted with efforts of House of Representatives legislators to address the needs of people with disabilities in the public release of a discussion draft of federal broadband reform legislation by staff of the Energy & Commerce Committee.
Advocates pointed to language proposed in section 404 in the staff draft entitled Access by Persons with Disabilities. The section calls for broadband, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), and other IP-based communications equipment manufacturers and service providers to make sure that their products and services are accessible to and usable by persons with disabilities. Companies making products or offering services do not have to provide access if they can prove that doing so would cause their business an undue burden. In the event an undue burden is claimed, manufacturers and providers still must find alternative ways to make products and services compatible with adaptive equipment and software that is specifically designed for use by people with disabilities.
Advocates also hailed section 208. Entitled Provision of Relay Service, this section calls for VoIP service providers to offer relay services for individuals with hearing, speech, or other communication-related disabilities. Current relay provisions, contained in Section 225 of the Communications Act of 1934, do not require VoIP service providers to do so. Relay services enable individuals who cannot speak or hear to engage in text, voice or video communication with other individuals through a third party called a communications assistant (CA).
What Accommodations Are Required for Online Learning?
A former student at Capella University has filed a federal lawsuit against the online institution, asserting that it violated the ADA by using technology that does not accommodate his learning disabilities. The student's disabilities include short-term memory loss. When Capella switched to a new software system, the plaintiff (Jeffry La Marca) asserts that his grades dropped. He asked Capella to switch back to the old software, which they said they could not do, or to give him more time to complete assignments, which he also asserts did not occur. La Marca was ultimately suspended from Capella prompting him to file a complaint with the US Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights. After several months of investigation, the department found that Capella had done nothing wrong.
Whatever the merits of the Capella case, some experts say that there are few clear guidelines dictating what assistive and information technologies colleges are supposed to provide to students with learning disabilities. Assistive and information technologies have evolved for students with disabilities including blindness and deafness. Such tools include:
- Screen magnifiers
- Textual description of graphics
- Audible text readers
- Closed-caption text
However, for students with such disabilities as dyslexia and attention-deficit disorder there are few guidelines and hence many fewer accommodations.
Judy Brewer, director of the "Web Accessibility Initiative" at the World Wide Web Consortium, based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, suggests that navigation controls on Web sites should remain consistent on different parts of the sites. Greg Gay, a transfer technology coordinator at the University of Toronto's Adaptive Technology Resource Center, a research group that helps governments around the world set Web standards for accommodating people with disabilities, said that although guidelines are not yet in place to support such a lawsuit, it raises interesting issues. Steven Mendelsohn, a consultant on information-access and disability issues, cautions that if a college or company has neglected to use assistant technology that is available and affordable, it could be held liable.
(Source: "Lawsuit Raises Issue of Accommodating Learning-Disabled Students Online," Dan Carnavale, The Chronicle of Higher Education, August 4, 2005.)
