Legal Bulletin
November 2, 2001
Legal Obligations of Colleges and Universities:
Accessible Web-based Information for Employees with Disabilities
As part of a series of Legal Bulletins related to the goals of the National Center on Accessible Information Technology in Education (AccessIT), this Bulletin will discuss the legal obligations of colleges and universities (referred to here as "universities") to provide access to Web-based information for students with disabilities. Previous Bulletins have discussed the laws that apply to educational institutions (Bulletin 10/12/01), students with disabilities in courses (Bulletin 10/19/01), and Web-based information for students (Bulletin 10/26/01).
Staff and faculty at universities use web sites for a variety
of purposes, including
- Information about college policies and procedures
- Directories and reference tools
- Email
- Access to departmental networks and servers
- Information about payroll and benefits
- Management of university functions, such as purchasing, facilities
or resources
- Other purposes directly related to an employee's job or status as an employee
For some employees with disabilities, accessing the Internet and web sites may be difficult or even impossible without the right equipment, and without the web sites meeting accessibility standards. For example, an employee who has visual impairments or a learning disability might need a computer with special, although not costly, accessibility software. Even with that software however, a particular web site may be designed in a way that makes that web site inaccessible to that employee, such as providing information in multimedia formats without a text equivalent or even the use of colored text with colored backgrounds on the page.
Universities are required by Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the ADA to think proactively about and have a compliance policy addressing reasonable accommodation requests of employees with disabilities. As part of their obligations, universities must make Web-based information accessible to employees with disabilities, if that information is needed by them to perform the essential functions of their job, or is a benefit of the job accessible by employees without disabilities. Of course, if information is available in another format that is equally effective to the employee, there may not be an immediate need for making some Web-based information accessible to that particular employee. However, by being proactive, and thinking about disability issues prior to purchasing computer equipment and designing web pages, additional costs associated with making web sites accessible to employees can be greatly reduced or even eliminated altogether. Designing new web pages with the concepts of universal design (i.e. accessible by all people, including those with disabilities), would involve very limited additional costs, much less than going through already-designed web pages and changing each item individually.
As discussed in the bulletin last week (Bulletin
10/26/01), the two primary, and very similar, accessibility standards
for web page design are the standards of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation
Act (see http://www.section508.gov/final_text.html)
and the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (see http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/).
Some examples of what is required by these standards include:
- A text equivalent for every non-text element, such as graphics and
pictures.
- Equivalent alternatives such as captioning or text description for
multimedia presentations.
- Alternative information conveyed without color when there is information
conveyed with color.
- Frames that are titled with text that facilitates frame identification
and navigation.
- Documents that are readable without requiring an associated style
sheet.
- A text-only page, with equivalent information and functionality and real-time updating, where there is no other way to make a web page accessible.
The other requirements can be read by going to the web sites liked above. For further discussion on accessibility standards, see the links below:
- University of Washington Computing Accessibility page - http://www.washington.edu/computing/accessible/
- Section 508 web site -
http://www.section508.gov/index.html
- Section 508 law and standards - http://www.section508.gov/About508.htm
- W3C Web Accessibility Initiative page - http://www.w3.org/WAI