Legal FAQThe following are paraphrases of questions from NC State faculty and staff about the university's Web Accessibility Regulation.
- Nothing in the US Americans with Disabilities Act requires the nebulous concept of "web accessibility" or even electronic media accessibility. Why should NC State have such a regulation?
- There is already technology available to people with disabilities for access to electronic media, such as text reading software, braille terminals, etc. Isn't this issue handled best on the client side?
- Given that a picture is worth a thousand words, wouldn't this be very time consuming and discourage faculty from adding graphics to enrich online materials?
- Wouldn't it be much cheaper to "retrofit" pages when a student having a particular disability registers for a class ?
The following questions and answers are from the National Center for Accessible Information Technology in Education (Funded in part by a grant from the US Department of Education):
- Does the information
on public web sites, intranet, and distance learning courses at post secondary
institutions have to be accessible to visitors with disabilities?
- What does it mean to "effectively communicate" web site content to individuals with disabilities as required by Section 504 and the ADA?
- Are there any
court cases on web accessibility and the obligations of post secondary
institutions under Section 504 or ADA?
- What civil rights
challenges might our post secondary institution have if our web sites are
not accessible?
- Does Section 508 apply to a state university or community colleges?
Questions from NC State faculty and staff:
Nothing in the US Americans with Disabilities Act requires the nebulous concept of "web accessibility" or even electronic media accessibility. Why should NC State have such a regulation?
The United States Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is responsible for ensuring that all educational institutions comply with the requirements of all federal civil rights laws, including Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and Title II of the ADA. To quote a recent overview of the topic of Web accessibility in higher education, OCR “has indicated through complaint resolution agreements and other documents that institutions covered by the ADA and §504 that use the Internet for communication regarding their programs, goods, or services, must make that information accessible. ( http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webpslegal.html ).
This has proven to be so for NC State. In 1998 and 1999, OCR complaints filed against the university by students with impaired vision and blindness specifically claimed that we failed to provide accessible web content and accessible/alternate formats as well as failing to provide comparable access to the Unity/EOS network, open computer labs, software needed for course work and failing to provide assistive technology and training. NC State submitted a seven-part “Information Technology Accessibility Plan” committing to take actions to resolve all of the complaints that OCR found on their investigation to be valid, including web accessibility. NC States' Web Accessibility Regulation is part of the university's fulfillment of those commitments.
There is already technology available for accessibility to electronic media on the client side, such as text reading software, braille terminals, etc. Isn't accessibility already being dealt with on the client side?
These are excellent examples of assistive technologies (AT), and in the three years since the resolution of the OCR complaints mentioned above, NC State has made terrific strides (and a large investment) in making assistive technologies generally available to students on campus. Like wheelchairs used to access the physical space, H assistive technology is the tool used to access the online space. Web accessibility standards help provide “curb cuts” the virtual environment so people using the AT will have comparable access to the information on the web site. For example, non graphical browser, AT like screen reader software can only perceive text-based content voice and provide both Braille and audio output, they however cannot perceive images. That is why the lack of simple “alt ” attribute that can give textual description for images can make a graphic based web content inaccessible (i.e. meaningless or less functional).
The most objectionable requirements are right at the beginning:(a) A text equivalent for every non-text element shall be provided (e.g., via "alt", "longdesc", or in element content). Given that a picture is worth a thousand words, wouldn't this be very time consuming and discourage faculty from adding graphics to enrich online materials?
For purposes of accessibility, not all images require a thousand words to provide people using text-only browsers with a sense of the significance of the image. In some cases a simple identifying phrase is adequate, for example when the image is an illustration of concepts described in the text. In others, a longer description or caption may be necessary to convey the concept. In some cases, an alternate format output may need to be provided to accommodate a student with a disability. For example, DSS produces tactile images of graphs, if needed for the desired learning outcome.
Wouldn't it be much cheaper to "retrofit" pages when a student having a particular disability registers for a class?
In general this seems similar to the arguments against curb cuts or accessible building design practices. However, according to surveys of case law (e.g. by Eileen Goldgeier, formerly of NC State's Office of Legal Affairs), the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) and courts have ruled that higher education (and other public institutions) violate ADA when they only respond "ad hoc" to individual requests for accommodation. Comprehensive strategies for accessibility are expected, and the least restrictive "direct accessibility" solutions are preferred.
The consensus among accessibility experts, such as the World Wide Web Consortium, is that it takes less time and is often more scalable to include accessibility as a design parameter from the start, rather than rig accessibility solutions as an afterthought. The Web Accessibility Regulation Implementation Guidelines provide a strategy for doing this for the design of web sites. To quote from a recent legal survey:
Institutions found to be discriminating against individuals with disabilities because the information contained on their web sites was inaccessible under the ADA could be required to pay for redesigning web sites as well as incurring the costs of "effectively communicating" web site content to individuals. It is much less expensive to design and implement an accessible web site from the beginning than to retool it later. Designing accessible web sites can be thought of as an insurance policy that protects against future costs incurred by not adequately meeting the needs of students, employees and the community.
