Legal Issues

There has not been a court decision that can answer this question definitively, or any reason for OCR to administratively rule on it. Generally, §504 and the ADA require that a school provide reasonable accommodation to individuals with disabilities. The Department of Education regulations suggest three types of accommodations that may be made, one of which is the provision of auxiliary aids.

The answer to this question is complicated by some unique academic rights enjoyed by faculty under the general concept of academic freedom. Academic freedom is generally considered to mean the right of faculty to speak freely on political and ideological issues without fear of reprisal. However, it commonly is thought to also encompass the right of faculty members to teach in the manner and style of their choosing.

Section 508 addresses the obligations of Federal agencies. However, state governments or individual institutions of higher education may have adopted some or all of the §508 standards or other standards such as those published by the World Wide Web Consortium. To determine whether your specific institution must comply with §508 or other accessibility standards, we suggest that individuals check to see if there is a policy statement/letter from your higher education administration or your state board of education, and/or ask your attorney

Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998 (§508) requires that:

The "effectively communicate" standard was used by the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in complaint resolution agreements with postsecondary institutions to determine whether the means of communication (meaning the transfer of information, whether via media, print or the Internet) of the postsecondary institution satisfied the legal obligations under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (§504) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Not yet, but it is only a matter of time. Although it is always hard to know with certainty what the results might be in a particular court case, it is well established that when a court is asked to decide a new issue, for example, obligations to provide accessible websites, it will look to earlier cases that have raised similar issues.

The Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996, also known as the Information Technology Management Reform Act, established a definition of information technology that has subsequently been cited by numerous other federal laws.

In the 1996 Amendments to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board (Access Board) was charged with developing technical standards by which compliance with the act could be measured. Section 508 required that the Access Board standards include "a definition of electronic and information technology that is consistent with the definition of information technology specified in section 5002(3) of the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996 (40 U.S.C. 1401(3))."

Inaccessible designs of postsecondary campus web pages can result in citizen complaints, lawsuits, or regulatory action. The following are examples of letters from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights with respect to the accessibility of web pages in institutions of higher education:

The Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act of 2008 (ADAAA), defines "mitigating measures" as things that lessen or ameliorate the effects of an impairment, including, but not limited to: