Depts.washington.edu



This audio file is created from a word document and the Central Access Reader, a free text to speech software that will read word documents and selectable text. You can download it for Windows or Mac computers at Salome Heyward Presents: Emerging Technology Standards Monday, 21 April 2014 Salome Heyward is a civil rights attorney with over 30 years’ experience in the field of disability discrimination law and disability management. Dr. Heyward is frequently sought out by media personnel to provide legal background for their productions concerning disability issues, e.g., NBC, CNN, ESPN, the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. She is a well-known and respected speaker and trainer in the area of disability discrimination law and disability management. She has been a featured presenter for national associations and organizations such as the American Association for Affirmative Action, the Association of Higher Education and Disability, the Council of State Governments, the National Association of State Personnel and the International Learning Disabilities Association. Dr. Heyward’s firm,?Salome Heyward & Associates, helps post-secondary institutions, agencies and employers develop and maintain effective and compliant ADA/Section 504 programs and services. Services provided include: Program and function audits; case evaluations; ADA consulting; and complaint review and analysis. This is being provided in a roughdraft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.*** Good morning.Welcome.The realtime CART captioning will be displayed on this screen. >> Welcome. >> BREE CALLAHAN: Hello, everybody. She has the microphone, so I'm going do my best to project here. But I have no theater training, so bear with me. I'm Bree Callahan. And I'm the director of Disability Resources for Students on campus. And this event has been brought to you in part by our office, Office of Risk Management and Amanda Paye, the compliance officer, Center for Teaching and Learning. And fabulous Housing and Food Services folks for this venue, which I want to make sure I thank all of them very much. Housing has been wonderful today. Thank you, housing.So Salome Heyward is somebody who has been in and out of higher education for the last 30 years, trained as a lawyer. And her specifically area of interest is disability law. She's here today to talk to us around emerging trends in disability and higher education. One of the main things we're going to be talking about today is technology, which includes Web sites and any kind of information technology, as well as maybe some other scattering of other tidbits that are impacting disability in higher education across the board. So I don't want to takes away too much time since we're starting a little late. Salome Heyward will come on up here. We're going to have our captioning running behind us, so we won't have slides. I do have PowerPoint slides of what she has generally going to talk about today that I can email out to folks later. So, if you want those, let me know and I'll send them by email. Salome, you're up.>> SALOME HEYWARD: One of the things that's most interesting about living a long time is you get to see interesting developments through the course of time and one of the things that has been most interesting to me is when I was graduating from law school, even while I was still in law school, I worked for the Department of Education, at that time it was the department of health education and welfare. That's how long ago it was.And as part of my work while I was in law school, it was at the very beginning of federal regulations to provide access and accommodation to individuals with disabilities.And so throughout the 30+ years that I've been doing this, it sort of you see I've been able to see the progression of the law until now in some ways we sort of come full circle with the law again.And a part of what I want to do is talk to you about those emerging trends. And how the more things change, the more they stay the same in terms of how we deal with issues of access and accommodation. One of the things that's interesting about laws that protect the rights of individuals with disabilities is while they are civil rights statutes like laws that we have that say we don't discriminate against people on the basis of race, on the basis of sex, on the basis of age, national origins, et cetera. And our disability discrimination laws are very much the same, except there's one significant difference when we talk about disability discrimination law. Because it doesn't do us any good to say to people we're not going to discriminate against you on the basis of disability. But we're not going to build ramps. We're not going to provide FM systems if you have a hearing impairment. We're not going to provide elevators if you have physical disabilities. We're not going to provide you meaningful access. So the one significant difference between disability discrimination statutes and other statutes is that part of the law that says we won't discriminate on the basis of disability but we have an affirmative obligation to provide you meaningful access to our programs, services, and benefits that we offer.So in the early days when we talked about that meaningful access, we were really talking about access to facilities.So we were talking about elevators and ramps and all of this kind of thing.Today when we talk about meaningful access, we're talking about access to technology.So it's because now we do our business in a very different way. So it makes sense for us to sort of harken back to where we were in the early '80?because it explains what we need to do today as it relates to technology.So I always like to use two cases to illustrate what I'm talking about when we talk about meaningful access yesterday and today as it were.I was working for a university. It was one of my client institutions. And unfortunately for them, they had given me the afternoon off and I didn't have a whole lot to do. And so, when I don't have a whole lot to do, I look for things to get into. And so I was I was in the office that they had provided me for the day. And I looked out of the window and they had just completed this new student center. And the and it was beautiful.You know? It was brand spanking new. It was shiny and all the things that expect from a new facility.But, as I was looking at the this brand spanking new student center, it occurred to me that everywhere I looked was a flight of stairs.And so I'm, like, okay, if I'm someone who is a wheelchair user, how do I get in to this brandnew building?You know, that everybody wants to go in and do things.And so I called up the facilities director. And I said ow I'm looking at the student center. How do I get in there if I'm a wheelchair user?Is there a ramp?What's the deal?And he said oh, yeah, there's an accessible entrance. In fact there's a sign and it will lead you exactly to the accessible entrance. I said, okay. I'll play. So I went across the street and I'm looking for the sign that's going to point me to the accessible entrance into this brandnew building.And I'm looking around and I don't see it and you would think it would be right there obvious in front of the building. And I still don't see it. And the only reason I'm continuing to look is I've been told there's a sign there.And so I'm about to give up. And out of the corner of my eye on the left side I see something sticking out around the tree.And there is in fact a sign on the fence but it's 3/4ths covered by the tree. And it's so high up that if I'm a wheelchair user, I'm never going to see this thing.But in truth, he was absolutely correct. It said accessible entrance and there was an arrow pointing around the side of the building.So I've now I'm going to go in that direction. And I go out and I want to go in that direction. And everything is a curb. There's no curb cut. There's no way for me to get around there. In fact, the only way for me to get there is for me to sort of you know, if I'm athletic and I'm a wheelchair user, I'm going to hop my chair off that curb and I'm in the street now and you know, there's no sidewalk so I'm going to have to go on the in the street around the side of the building.So I go around the side of the building and I'm looking for this ramp and how you know, how I'm going to get into this accessible entrance. And I get to the side of the building where the arrow has led me. And everything is gravel. So it's just a gravel pathway. And off in the distance at the end of this gravel is, in fact, a ramp. But there's a truck parked in front of it.Okay?This is not meaningful access.When we talk about access to facilities and how we provide access to individuals.But we have the same kind of issue when we talk about technology. Because a part of the struggle for institutions is technology is where we live now. People don't visit campuses any more.We go on the Web sites and we visit campus through their Web sites and that's how we seek information. And much of what we do is through emails and Web sites and that's and we use technology. And all of education now is about distance learning and online learning and all of these kinds of things. So the issue becomes is how do we meet our responsibility to provide meaningful access in the way in which we use technology?So there's a business school in this country, you know, I won't name them. They're in the top five of business schools in the country. And they had a project. They it was their it was the pet project of the Dean of the business school. He called it initiative 2010. And the focus of this project was to improve their application process.And so they hired consultants to design a new Web site for them. They totally put their application process online. And as we do on college and university campuses when we have something exciting and new like that, we don't keep it to ourselves. We have a you know, we have a party to introduce and show off our fancy new Web site and application process. And that's exactly what this business school did.They invited everybody to come see their new Web site and they were going to demonstrate their new application process.And you know, everybody was on the stage. The Dean of the business school, the technology folks who created the Web site and set up the application process. And they had this entire ceremony to demonstrate. And the Dean ended it by saying "You know, from here on out, anybody applying for admission to this business school will apply online. Our entire application process is now online. We don't do paper applications any more."And then the Dean of the business school made a huge enormous mistake. Because he said "Are there any questions?" And sitting in the audience was the disability services coordinator for the university. And she said "I just have one question."And he said, "Yes?" And she said, "Is your Web site and your new application process fully accessible." And, you know, he didn't become Dean of the law school for no reason. He said well of course. Dean of the business school for no reason. He said of course. And she said well, okay. So you know, you have text based for pdf files, you have tabs if I use a screen reader, I'm not going to have any problems with headers and I notice you have a video. It didn't appear to be captioned. So you know, how is it accessible?Well now the Dean's looking at the technology folks and people are starting to stammer.And she went, "It doesn't appear to be accessible" and finally the technology person was what do you mean by that?And she said I mean does it meet Section 508 standards, does it meet Web 2.0 standards for the World Wide Web. Did you have any of that in developing the Web site in the application process. And the guy went no. And she said well then if I'm a person with a disability, and you're telling me that the only way I can apply for admissions to your business school and the only way that I can learn about your business school is to use this Web site and this application process, then how do I apply to your business school when your Web site and your application process is inaccessible?And there's a lot of whispering on the stage and you can probably hear the Dean say who let her in. And they went back and forth. So the Dean went "Well those people can just apply the oldfashioned way."And she went, "Well, no, they can't." And they said why. And she said well, because if the only people applying to your business school are people with disabilities, then you have required me to disclose that I have a disability in seeking admission to your institution, which is also in violation of the law.Now, what this case illustrates is in the same way that we struggled with meaningful access in terms of the facilities, we are now facing the same kinds of struggles with respect to access to technology.And a part of the issue for colleges and universities on a national level is how to provide meaningful access to individuals with disabilities who use assistive technology, how to provide access to them in terms of the way in which we use technology and the manner in which we provide information to individuals.So it's important if we're including videos on our Web site, that they be captioned. It's important that when we're putting together our Web site, we contemplate the fact that individuals with disabilities will be using assistive technology, which requires us to meet accessibility standards so they have access to the same information.So those are the kinds of struggles now when we talk about emerging trends, in terms of access for individuals with disabilities, the most important issue right now is access to technology.And we saw this come to fruition, you know, the first thing that brought this to a head on a national level was the kindle. And what happened with Kindle is Kindle went to a number of colleges and universities in the country and said, you know, the manufacturers of Kindle said why don't we enter into a pilot program with you all and instead of your students buying textbooks, you know, and carrying around textbooks, they just download their textbooks on to their Kindle readers and that's how they have access to the information in the textbooks from here on out.And a number of colleges and universities in this country said hey, that's a great idea. Let's do that.And so they entered into a pilot program with Kindle. Imagine their surprise that not many days went by before they were all sued and before complaints were filed with the department of education. Why?Because if you were an individual who is blind, who uses assistive technology, there are significant parts of Kindle that are inaccessible to you because it doesn't work with the assistive technology and adaptive technology that individuals use.So what quickly happened was we had the Department of Education and the Department of Justice sending a letter to every president of a college or university in this country.Now, when I worked for the Department of Education what they call these letters is "Dear Colleague" letters.Sounds kind of pleasant, doesn't it?"Dear Colleague, how are you?"I am fine. In legal parlance, if you work for a federal enforcement agency, the "Dear Colleague" letter is equivalent of a twobyfour across your skull.So what the Department of Education and Department of Justice did is to send to every president of every institution in this country a "Dear Colleague" letter about the Kindle pilot project. What the letter said is hey, you have an obligation to provide access to emerging technology. And the letter went on to say you can't enter into pilot projects and agreements with third party vendors where you are offering to your students, your employees, your patrons technology that is inaccessible to individuals with disabilities. And so all of the institutions who entered these projects, entered the pilot projects with Kindle ended up having to negotiate a settlement agreement with the Department of Justice, which basically provided that they could not have such a program because of the inaccessibility of the Kindle.Now, one would think that that kind of letter being received on a national level would cause colleges and universities to go oh, we have an obligation to provide access to technology.No. It was like a tree falling in the forest. If no one is around to hear it fall.Because what then quickly followed was a number of different cases in which access to technology was, again, the issue. What we saw was the Florida State University case. Florida State University used a course management system which was very much they created themselves but it was kind of like Blackboard and Moodle and other course management systems. But the problem is that it was inaccessible for individuals who use the system and adaptive technologies. So while everybody else in the class would do their homework, get their homework checked, could interact with the tutor or the graduate assistants for the math department, students with disabilities who use the assistive or adaptive technology, this course management system was not accessible to them.And so the Department of Education found Florida state in violation. They negotiated a settlement agreement, said they would fix their course management system.That was quickly followed, then, by and this was the most significant case to date litigation, the National Federation for the Blind was involved in a suit against Penn State University.And what was significant about this case is that it addressed every single way that technology can be used on a college or university campus. Down to the ATMs. Kindle, so the ATMs weren't accessible, the clickers that we used in classrooms weren't accessible, all the technology that's set up for faculty to do their lectures was inaccessibility, the course management was inaccessible. The Web site was inaccessible. Every conceivable way that technology could be used by a university was covered in the Penn State litigation.And then what followed was the federal government saying I guess you guys didn't get it so we'll send another "Dear Colleague" letter. And the second "Dear Colleague" letter to colleges and universities specifically outlined what the responsibilities were for institutions in providing access to technology.Now, you know, where we are today is we followed that by, you know, complaints filed against the South Carolina technical college system. There was a recent case involving Louisiana tech university followed by a case and a settlement involving the University of Montana.Now, we can't forget the case involving the law school admissions council because their admissions process was inaccessible. So all this activity that's out there involving colleges and universities related to access to technology is where we are today. And it's the most pressing issue for institutions right now is how do we provide access to technology?So one of the what I want to talk to you about is what those compliance standards. How they operate in the real world. What are the things we need to be concerned about. You know, one of the things we have to remember is when we're talking about technology, what we're really talking about is how we communicate with people.How we provide information to individuals.And access to technology on many levels is about effective communication.What are the means that we use to communicate?If we're going to put all our information on a Web site, if we want to put out a Web site that describes who we are, you know, and videos about our campus or if I visit your campus and I walk up to a kiosk and I push the button and it tells me about what happens on a campus or I can go to admissions and get sort of the selfguided tour using technology, all of those things that we use to communicate with individuals, we have to make accessible to individuals with disabilities as well.So what we're talking about is we are obligated to provide access to the same information with the same ease of use, the same timeliness of response to individuals with disabilities as we provide to everyone else. So the issue in the South Carolina system case was the fact that none of the Web sites used by the technical colleges of South Carolina system were accessible.So when the Department of Education did a compliance review for the South Carolina system, what they found was there were you know, Web sites had pdf files with no alternate text. There were no headers. Videos were not captioned. So anybody using assistive technology could not access the information on those Web sites. And furthermore, there was no contact person. So there was nowhere on the Web site did it say if you have a disability and you need access to information, here's who you contact. Here's the office. Here's the person that you can communicate with to get access to the information.So it's important for us it's important for institutions in terms of the Web sites that they use, to make sure that you meet 508 or 2.0 standards that those Web sites are fully accessible.We have to provide the same ease of use for individuals with disabilities. There was an institution that, as many large universities do, you know, we most universities or colleges for that matter, they have computer labs.You know? Some of them are connected you know, for some institutions it's connected to your library or it's in the space in the library.At this particular university, their computer lab in their library was open 24 hours a day. For individuals to use.Or open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There were work study students to assist you if you had difficulty with research. No problem. You just go into the commuter lab and get some assistance. Unless you were an individual with a disability who needed to use adaptive or assistive technology workstation.For those individuals, there was one workstation in the disability services office. They were open MondayFriday 8:00?to 5:00, 5:30ish. And there was one other workstation in the library in a locked room.Except no one in the library had a key to that room. Only the disability services staff had a key to the room. But it didn't matter that no one in the library had a key to the room because no one on the library staff knew how to use the equipment and to assist anyone who might use assistance who needed assistance. So this is an example of an institution that did not provide computer workstation services for individuals with disabilities where they had the same ease of use as everyone else who would go to the library and be able to use a computer workstation 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.For individuals with disabilities who used the assistive or adaptive technology, they didn't have the same access to the services.We have to provide ready access to the information that's available for individuals with disabilities. Yes?>> AUDIENCE: So does that mean we need to go out and train everyone on campus who needs this information?Or do we wait for a student to say I need this and then try to educate in a fast efficient manner?>> SALOME HEYWARD: No. We don't wait for a student to say or a patron to say I need this. Because for the same reason that we don't wait for somebody to say I need a ramp or an elevator.Because we know we have students and individuals who use assistive and adaptive equipment, so the obligation of the institution is to provide a number of accessible workstations and to have people who are trained to assist people who would use them.So for example, in the university that had the computer workstations, if they had 200 computer workstations, a percentage of them, if not all, should have assistive and adoptive technology attached to it and a percentage of their work study students who assisted people should have the necessary training to provide assistance. It's like one of the institutions I work with, they were they were redoing their library.And the librarian was all excited. She was like look, we're going to have all these new computer workstations. It was a small college. She was, like, we're going to have 18 new computer workstations in the library.And I said, "How many of those workstations are going to have adaptive and assistive technology attached to it and who is going to provide training and provide assistance to individuals who might want to use them?" She had never contemplated including assistive or adaptive technology to the new workstation. The obligation is to always have that on the table. Meaningful access means that we go it's our obligation to make sure that we provide access to the technology that we offer to everyone else. You know, you have to understand the difference between access and accommodation.When someone seeks accommodation, they have to make a specific request. Our obligation to provide meaningful access means they shouldn't have to ask for it. You know, that's why the law says it should be readily accessible to and usable by. Because we know that individuals it's like when we have a theater. We know that individuals with hearing impairments may come to a performance.That's why the law requires new construction in new theaters to have FM systems attach to it because we know we may have patrons who have hearing impairments. So we don't require people to request accommodation and then wait to provide it to them. Readily accessible to and usable by so that when they come in, they should have meaningful access. We should provide opportunities for them to have access to the same information that we're providing to everyone else. So that, you know, it's we don't wait for people to request a ramp or an elevator. We know they're going to nude them. It's like when we do graduation, most institutions now have interpreters that they hire. They don't wait for somebody to request interpreter services because they know they will have people who attend their graduation that will need access to information.And may need interpreters services.>> AUDIENCE: On that point if you're going to answer later, I'll wait. But this seems to be one of the areas of confusion on campus. The request for interpreters and whether captioning is sufficient or also need ASL and I wonder if you have an opinion on that.>> SALOME HEYWARD: Well captioning is one of those things where what we what the law requires institutions to do is to prioritize their need.And what you know, the University of Montana case, which is the latest settlement agreement involving the Department of Justice. What Justice said to the institution is look, we're going to allow you from and they picked a year, I think it was 2010 this is legacy material. For your legacy material, we're going to allow you to prioritize what is the material that gets used the most, where you have the greatest need for access. And then you're going to make decisions about captioning that material. What's most important.Moving forward, you should be captioning everything that is that has wide implications that individuals will need access to this information.Because we have the technology to do it. You have the ability to do it. And it should be a part of how you design your courses and the work that you do.And your Web sites.You should be building that in as part of your means of providing access.>> AUDIENCE: But, if I could, for instance, I'm at the law school. On any given day at the noon hour, there are three, four, five events open to the public. And you know how expensive both captioning and ASL interpretation is. And you can be sure they're not all being covered. So the law school's interpretation seems to be on a given basis one makes the request so many days in advance. I know that's not necessarily best practice but you see what I'm saying, there's courses, there's meetings.>> SALOME HEYWARD: Basically that's why under the law we allow institutions to do an assessment and we're going to get to that and prioritize their needs. One of the things that every most institutions in the country do, is when they do events, there's that statement on the flyers or whatever that says, "If you need access, this is how this is who you contact."That's a way in which the federal government says okay, you're making a good faith effort. You're providing notice to people that if they need access, here's who you contact and we'll make it happen.Based on your needs.Versus we're doing graduation. We do it every year. We know that we will have individuals at graduation every year that will need access. We're going to go ahead and build in the cost of interpreter services for graduation, which is very different than the law school that has four programs every Friday, some of them with 10 people, some of them with 15 people, et cetera.So the law allows institutions to make those kinds of decisions as long as you provide a method that allows you to provide access when necessary.>> AUDIENCE: Again, not to press the point, but again, your accommodation access distinction? I think you've answered it or applied in your answer, implied in your answer, the larger the event that the need will be apparent, the less than one does not make that notice saying you need to request. It's for the smaller events the notice is always there but it certainly would not be automatically applied on a daily basis for the reasons you said.>> SALOME HEYWARD: The law always establishes that we get to prioritize based on the relative importance of what is going on.And we apply the same standard to how we accommodate students. It is more important and more pressing to provide let me say the Cadillac of accommodations based on the importance of what's going on.So I'm more concerned to make sure that the student has access and is properly accommodated if it's a final exam than I am in terms of a an RA or resident hall meeting where we might use a lesser means of providing access to the information because we're prioritizing the relative importance of communication and the information that's being imparted. Okay?>> AUDIENCE: Thanks.>> So we're going to worry about it being the individual having ready access to the information that is there.So for example, there's a case in which a student was in a math lab. And what the student needed in the lab was magnification software placed on one of the computer workstations. And what happened for this student is she made the request. She made three requests. The faculty member then made requests. And the IT department never got around to installing the software on the workstation for the student.And in point of fact, what they said to the student was hey, just go online and download it and install this it yourself. And the student attempted to do that. But still had problems with getting the software to work properly. And when she sought to get IT to help her with that, they never responded. Clearly what the department of education said to the institution is that you need to be to provide the student ready access to the course material in the same way that every other student in that lab had access to the material. The next compliance standard we have is we need to make sure that we provide to the student or the individual it's not just students. It can be an employee or a patron of the institution the same completeness of information.Now, you know, this was an interesting case, one of the things that you know if you work with students in terms of putting material in an alternate format is any tables, graphs, those kinds of things are an absolute nightmare. And that it is very, very difficult to place tables, graphs in an alternate format.And this student was enrolled in a course where there were a lot of tables and a lot of graphs as part of the instructional material.And what the institution decided to do is the instructional design team agreed to deal with the graphs and tables that were a part of the textbook.And so they placed the material in an alternate format for the student.And what they said to the faculty member was that the faculty member for those materials that he handed out on his own, that he would be responsible, they would assist him and provide support to him, but he would be responsible for providing the alternate text to the student for those materials.The faculty member maintained that it was impossible to provide the graphs and tables in an alternate format. There was back and forth between the faculty member, the disability services office, the provost, you know, the Dean of the school. And finally, basically, someone said to the faculty member "Just do it."And so the student, the instructional design team did a great job on the course material. What the faculty member did on the homework assignments is he basically provided to the student a description. But the student? of the tables and graphs. But the student found that he didn't understand what the faculty member was providing him. They weren't clear. It was incomplete.And so ultimately, out of frustration, the student dropped the course, filed a complaint with the Department of Education. And when the Department of Education investigated the case, the issue became, well, if the instructional design team could provide complete usable descriptions of the tables and graphs, why can't the faculty member do the same thing with respect to the homework with the assistance of the instructional design team.What the faculty member said during the investigation was, well, I kind of sort of provided the student partial descriptions. My expectation is that he would come back and ask additional questions. And, when he asked those additional questions, then I would fill in the information that was missing.Now, the problem with that plan on the part of the faculty member is he never told the student this. He didn't tell the student that he was providing impartial descriptions. So the student thought that what the faculty member handed him was the homework assignment and he couldn't understand what he was being provided.So ultimately, the institution was found in violation because they didn't provide complete information to the student by the faculty member in terms of what they were providing to him.And what made this case even worse was that the student retook the course with a faculty member who had absolutely no problem in providing the descriptions of the tables and the graphs. And the student ultimately passed the class with a high B or an A. So the issue for the Department of Ed, was that the student had wasted an entire semester because he wasn't properly accommodated by the institution.Other areas where we see issues with functionality and completeness of information is the course management systems that we use. You know, many Blackboard is supposedly the most accessible. But even Blackboard has issues. And one of the areas where Blackboard has difficulty is when there is simultaneous communication. In this particular case, what happened was we had a student enrolled in a course where basically, what happens was students were able to do their homework and also not only do they homework and get it corrected and make changes to their homework, but the course management system also allowed students to present their projects engage in discussion with each other online about the projects. The faculty member would make comments and there would be this ongoing simultaneous communication related to the course work.Except it was totally inaccessible to blind students who used assistive technology.And so what the university said was well, what we'll do is we'll allow you to email the faculty member. The faculty member you can email your questions to the faculty member. He will email back to you. And that will provide you access to what's going on.And what the Department of Education said was no. It is not the same.It is not the same experience as every other student in the class has. Because every other student can post their homework, get it corrected. Can post their project information and engage in a dialogue with their peers and have the faculty members make comments. And there's the simultaneous communication and disruption that's going on related to their work that these students are denied access to because all they get to do is email questions to the faculty member. It is not the same educational experience.So we have to be concerned with those kinds of issues.The next issue that we have to be concerned with is the timeliness of response. One of the issues that we have with alternate text, when we need to put material in an alternate format for our students with disabilities, is that sometimes it takes us if we have to deal with publishers and try to get an alternate text materials from publishers, it takes a lot of time. There was a business school in this country where the faculty basically teach from what's happening in the world today.So they don't really use a textbook. And a part of the issue for the students who were blind in this program was that faculty members would hand out materials at the beginning of the week and it was stuff that was going on in the news that was happening presently today. There was no formal textbook for the course.So in order for the disability services office to provide access to these two students, they had to get the material two weeks in advance from the faculty member and they had seven work study students working five days a week to place the material in an alternate format. And the issue is that the students with disabilities had to receive the material as the same time as everyone else because if they did not, they would be behind in their course studies and their materials. So it was important and vital that they place the material in an alternate format so they receive it in a timely manner. Now, the issues that institutions have with alternate format and placing material in an alternate format is why the federal government has begun to say to colleges and universities, you cannot wait until the student makes the request. You have to have a system in place that allows you to respond rapidly to the needs of students who need materials in an alternate format. And you either as an institution have to have that system in place on your campus or as many institutions do, a lot of institutions in the south for example contract with Georgia Tech because Georgia Tech has their own organization that that's what they do. And so every university doesn't do their own alternate formatting. They just send it to Georgia Tech, they just send it to Georgia Tech and contract with Georgia Tech to do it. But this is one of the areas the federal government is saying to institutions you have to have a system in place. You can't wait until the student makes a request because we know if you wait until the student makes the request, many times they don't receive the material in a timely manner.There was a case on this very topic in which what the institution said to the students is if you need material in an alternate format, you need to let us know in July.For the start of the semester. So the student let them know in July, here are the courses I'm taking I need my textbooks in an alternate format. Unfortunately for the student, disability services coordinator waited well the end of August so begin to place make the request to put the material in an alternate format. So, first of all, the student only receives material for two of the seven courses he was taking. And the materials that he did receive had pages missing, charts and tables missing, pagers misnumbered, misspellings, all of these problems that made the material completely unusable by the student.So you know, those are the kinds of cases that have moved the Department of Education and Justice to say to institutions, you have to have a system in place that allows you to place material in an alternate format. Do it in a timely manner and do it in an efficient and effective manner so that students have access to information.The other compliance obligation that we have is we have to respect the rights of students with disabilities to have the same level of independence as every other student in a course or a program.There was a case in which a student, again, was in a math lab. And because of her visual impairment, she required the software she required a setting on the computer that would have a white background instead of a black background.So what happened on the math lab computer is that it kept losing the setting. So she'd constantly have to make requests for IT to come adjust the computer workstation that she was using. The IT department did not respond in a timely manner so the student was dependent on her classmates and a faculty member to help her get her work done in the lab. And a part of the issue for the Department of Education is that the student should have the same level of independence and everyone else in the class to be able to do her work.And should not be dependent on other students in the class to get things done.The final compliance obligation that institutions have is that when we offer access to individuals with disabilities, we have to offer access in the most integrated setting appropriate. And so what we are concerned about is that we offer access in a manner that allows students with disabilities to be fully integrated with their peers in the course of study that they're enrolled in. There was a case involving a business school in which a business school had its own library. And a part of the issue was that faculty members and students working on projects, they didn't go to the central campus library. They used the library in the business school. The problem with the library in the business school is that their library database because of the system, platform it was on was inaccessible for students who were blind using assistive technology.And so the issue for those students was that they could not access data and do their work in the business school library.They had to use the main campus library.And when the students filed the complaint, the position of the institution was "What's the problem?" They have the same ability to do research at the main library and so why would this be a violation of their rights under the law?And what the Department of Education says is that you're missing the intangibles. When we say that they should be fully integrated in their program, what's the experience of students who get to work in the business school library?The experience of students who get to use that library database is that they're working on their projects with their peers. They have interactions with faculty members who are also using that library. And so there's informal education and interactions that are going on in the business school library that these students are denied because they have to go to the main campus library to do their research and they don't get to have those formal interactions, informal interactions with faculty. They don't get to have the opportunity to work on projects with their peers in that environment because the database is inaccessible to them. So those kinds of things are also important when we try to when we are provided access to students with disabilities. One of the issues that institutions constantly struggle with is when they make decisions where they that result in students or individuals with disabilities being treated differently on the basis of disability.And if you go back to the early business school case I talked about where the Dean said, "Hey, those folks can apply the oldfashioned way" that's an example of treating individuals different based on their disability. So there's another unique thing we begin to see. That's related to distance learning and online learning.And one of the issues that comes up is with students seek accommodations in a distance learning environment, one of the things that they may request is extended time. And so on a national level, what we have begun to see is faculty members who say "No, we're not providing extended time on a in a distance learning course."They either they say one of two things. If you want extended time and you're enrolled in a distance learning or online course, you have to come to campus to take your exam. If you want extended time.Or they just flatly say no extended time on a distance learning or online course because their concern is that if they provide greater time, that students may be cheating on exams.And so what the federal government has said to institutions is you cannot treat students differently on the basis of disability. So you can't say to students with disabilities no, we're not going to provide you an accommodation because you might possibly cheat on the exam.What the federal government has said to institutions is, if you have concern about the integrity of your exam process, that's not limited to your students with disabilities. If there's a problem with the exam process, the integrity of the process, it exists for all your students. So, if you're going to make your students with disabilities come to campus to take their exams, you need to make all of your students take their exams on campus. Otherwise, students with disabilities should have the same opportunity to take their exams online as everyone else. And if that entitles them to extended time, then they have a right to extended time when they take their exams online.So we can't treat individuals differently on the basis of disability. To wrap up and what's important on the business of technology, what we've seen from the Department of Education is that they have we have a number of settlement agreements where what they have said to institutions is this is what we expect to see if you want to demonstrate that you're making a good faith effort to provide access to technology.And so what the federal government has said to institutions and this sort of circles back to how we prioritize how we provide access to some things is the first thing that the federal government has said to institutions is that we have to begin to look at access to technology as an institution wide obligation. And that it's not about individual individuals requesting accommodations. It's about your obligation to provide access on an institution wide basis. So that's the first thing that they've said. The next thing they've said to colleges and universities is that you have to adopt a policy regarding access to electronic information technology that covers every way in which technology is used on your institution.And that policy should formalize your compliance obligations under the law. Which means we're providing meaningful access to is readily that things are really accessible to readily accessible to individuals with disabilities. They have the same ease of use. They have the same completeness of information. They have the same timeliness of response. All of the compliance issues that we've talked about already today.The next thing that federal government has said to institutions is that you need to do an institutionwide audit.And what this audit requires institutions to do is to assess to make to do an evaluation of how accessible technology is on the campus as a whole. For an institution your size, that's an enormous responsibility.But what the federal government says to has said to institutions is we expect you to evaluate and audit your use of technology.And when you audit your use of technology, we expect you to identify all of those areas where you have barriers to access.And once you identify those areas where you have barriers to access, our expectation is that you prioritize, you identify the strategies to providing access and you prioritize on the basis of importance how you're going to provide access to individuals with disabilities. So you decide what are the most significant barriers to access. You decide the relative importance and then you have to develop strategies for providing access and you have to devote the necessary resources to achieving access. The next thing that they've said to institutions is that you have to put somebody in charge of this. You know, one of the things that is a struggle for colleges and universities is that frequently, no one is in charge of the issue of access to technology on a campuswide basis.One of the institutions I work with you know, they have a large online and distance learning program. And so we were discussing access to technology, and I said, "So do you have a policy in terms of the courses that your faculty put up and how you assess whether they meet accessibility standards?" And they said, "Yes, we have accessibility standards. Yes, we provide instructional support for our faculty to help them in making their course work accessible."And they said, "We even go so far as to do an assessment every year on our courses. And one of the things we look at is how accessible it is."And I said, "So how is it working?" And they said, "Not at all."And I said, "Why isn't it working?" And they said, "Because here's the rub: When we identify that the course is not fully accessible, we tell the faculty member and we say you need to fix this. And the faculty member says to us, no, that's your job, you need to fix it. So basically we just argue about who's responsible for fixing it. But nobody fixes it."And so there are varying degrees of this insanity across the country. You have institutions like this one where they identify the problem and they argue about who's responsible for fixing it. You have other institutions where they don't have a policy or standard at all and it's like the wild wild west. Their faculty can put up whatever they want. Nobody checks on accessibility. There's no standard they have to adhere to. They put up all this YouTube stuff. They create stuff. They go online. They download things. And nobody is responsible for ensuring that the material is accessible.And then we have other institutions where, you know, I met with I was sitting with the president's team. And one of the issues was access to technology.And I said to the president, I said, if you have a technology problem, who do you go to?He goes well, I go to head of IT. I said okay. Well, then why is it that when there is a technology problem on campus where an individual with a disability doesn't have access they don't get to go to IT?You have your disability services staff try to deal with it. They're not IT experts. The identified IT experts on campus work in your institutional technology department. It is not uncommon on colleges and universities campuses to not have one person in the IT person that has any knowledge and understanding of adaptive or assistive technology. And many of them don't even think it's their responsibility>> AUDIENCE: But on that point, you do need clear protocol and challenge of communication. Maybe that IT person shouldn't go to disability services but IT at individual departments or something. You're not suggesting the model to be that the student goes directly to the top of IT.>> SALOME HEYWARD: No. But what I am suggesting is that if the issue is access to technology on an institutionwide basis, that is more properly housed in IT than it is in your disability services office. But you absolutely. The institutions who do this well and there are a few who do they have a committee. And on that committee is representatives of IT, their instructional design team, their disability services office and all these people work together in identifying areas where access is a problem and prioritizing the need for the institution.This is not a task and that's why I said for an institution this big this is not a task that can be done by one department. What you need is a number of departments working together to make it happen. And you need your distance learning folks on that committee as well. And what has to happen and what the federal government is saying to institutions is you develop protocols, in each of these settlement agreements, what they're saying to institutions is you develop protocols, you prioritize your need, you invest resources. You come up with strategies and you establish your good faith effort that way.The expectation is not that institution is suddenly in compliance. I mean, there's an understanding that this is an enormous task. And along with the understanding that it's an enormous task is the recognition on the part of the federal government that some barriers to access are insurmountable. And they allow institutions to identify those barriers that they consider to be insurmountable. But you then have to come up with an alternative means of providing access to the information that's out there.So that's all part and parcel to of the federal government saying to institutions and this comes out of frustration of the fact of institutions not identifying some highlevel administrator to take a leadership role. And that's why they're suddenly saying to institutions, you need to identify someone who is in charge of this.And you can't just let it be people debating about who's responsible, people arguing about who's responsible, and no one taking a leadership role in ensuring that there's access to technology.So that's one of the most significant things that the federal government is saying now to institutions. The other kinds of things that they're saying and we touched on this earlier, is that in the same way as institutions are allowed to identify those barriers that are insurmountable and come up with alternative means of providing access, what the federal government is also saying to institutions is that we understand that you have legacy material that's out there. That has not been made accessible. And we're not saying to institutions that you need to go back and caption everything.You know, you need to like, one of the things is that you know, for institutions, why are you going to caption a video for a course that maybe four people take that course and you know, it's not a pressing if you're going to choose between captioning that video and captioning a video for you know, chemistry or art 100 where 150 students take that course every year, you're going to pick the course where you have more individuals participating and more need for access than something where maybe one person every 10 years might need it captioned. And so they allow institutions to prioritize and make those kinds of determinations.The final thing the federal government is saying to institutions is that what they expect to see is a good faith effort. They don't expect to see an institution being able to snap its fingers and solve this problem immediately.Because one of the recognitions they have is this problem is huge and it's getting bigger every day. Because we have a whole lot more ways we can use technology than we can provide access to technology. We have a number of barriers to technology.And so the onus is on institutions to constantly demonstrate the good faith effort to provide access to materials.I'm going to end with two cases that sort of demonstrate an institution that did it well and an institution that didn't do it quite so well.And in both cases we have institutions that have library databases that in some ways are inaccessible. And like many large institutions do now, the faculty does a lecture, they put up material. Nobody's checking to see if it's in a pdf or there's an alternate text. They're just putting that stuff on the library database and nobody worries about the level of access that's provided in terms of accessibility.And in both of these cases we had students that were Ph.D. students doing research. And the over all database used by the library was inaccessible for the two students who had visual impairments.And in the first case in both cases what was decided between the disability services office and the library director was that somebody on the library staff would assist the student in doing the research. In the first case, what the library director that was the overall agreement. When the student was doing the first student was trying to do research, she contacted the library, she was in the library, she said hey, somebody, based on my accommodations, somebody is supposed to assist me in doing research. And basically, the staff said we don't help students do research. What's wrong with you?That's not our job.She said yeah, yeah, but I have an accommodation and the library director said that somebody on your staff would assist me in doing research.Two weeks to resolve what went on in terms of the agreement. And so finally, the library director just sort of pointed at somebody and went yeah, you help the student, two weeks after they went back and forth with the disability services director. Student remade her request for what she was attempting to research. It took the staff member three and a half weeks to get the material to her.And then when she wanted additional information, it was another 3 1/2 weeks to get a phone call returned.What the Department of Education said is that this is not a good faith effort to provide access to the student. In the second case, here's what they did: What the library director did was assign the job to someone specifically. What the disability services office did was to employ a research assistant to work with the student. The research assistant worked with the student, worked with the library staff person, and that's the way in which they provided the information to the student who was trying to do research. And in addition, the library director got on the phone, talked to her colleagues at other institutions, and while their database was not accessible, she found two other libraries that had accessible databases and she got permission for the student to do research using those libraries.So in that case, what the Department of Education said was that's a good faith effort to provide access to a student with a disability. So the important part of those case examples is what happens when a student files a complaint where someone says I've been denied access, what the federal government looks at is whether or not the institution made a good faith effort to provide the information or access to the individual.And even if it's not exactly the same, as long as they are close and they provide the access to the information, that's in compliance. Because there's a recognition that we can't duplicate every single thing. But we have to come up with an alternative means of access that gets as close as we possibly can to providing full access to individuals with disabilities. I'm going to end on a case that I find really amusing.And then we'll open it up for any questions that you all may have.One of the institutions that I have done work with, they do what many institutions do now. And that is the second that their faculty members conduct a lecture, it goes up online. And they call it open courseware and every single lecture that is conducted by a faculty member at this institution is immediately online.Almost you know seconds after the faculty member completes the lecture. (Bottle dropped) and everything is on line. And what happens, students figure out a way that that can benefit them.And what students figured out was if the faculty member's lecture is immediately online, they really don't have to go to class.You know?They can just go online and at their leisure, peruse the lecture from the faculty member.Now, the way in which the disability services office realized that there was a problem with access with respect to open courseware was that the students with disabilities came to complain because they did have to go to class because it wasn't fully accessible to certain students using their assistive technology.And so disability services office went okay, our students with disabilities should have the same ability to skip class as everyone else. And so we need to make the open courseware fully accessible to students with disabilities.Any questions?I wasn't that lucid. Yes, ma'am.>> AUDIENCE: Have you seen any unique issues coming up on the employment side when it comes to technology? >> SALOME HEYWARD: Not to the same degree that we see for students. Because largely what happens I've seen a few cases and I'll give you some case examples, but largely what happens on the employment side is that it is so workplace specific that we don't see the same kind of technology used. The kinds of things I've seen on the employment side are cases like students I mean employees with visual impairments and the supervisor will have big meetings and do handouts. And won't put them in an accessible format. For the individual with a visual impairment.So it's been those kinds of things. Usually it's on the employment side, it's really job performance specific. If there's something related to the disability that prevents the individual from doing their job. The most interesting case that I had on the employment side involved a program that employed two deaf employees. And the position of the institution was that they would provide interpreter services for the employees if it was workrelated.Specifically related to their job and performing their job.But they refused to provide interpreter services or other means of access for anything that they considered to be outside the job performance of the two employees. But that meant things like orientation, you know, if they had meetings at HR and other things that were ancillary to their employment. So ultimately, of course, they were found in violation, because that's all part of the employment experience. And so you can't say to your two employees, we're only going to provide you access if it's specifically related to how you get your job done and all this other stuff you're on your own.So you know, but but we have we deal with fewer cases of access to technology because it's usually workplace specific.Yes, sir?>> AUDIENCE: I seem to be dealing with a few cases of fluctuating physical and mental health at the moment. And I was wondering if you have any innovative solutions with people losing time and getting them caught up so they don't get delayed by quarters or years.>> What do you mean fluctuating >> AUDIENCE: For example with bipolar disorder, they can or a case I had last week, she has a significant lower extremity problem and she couldn't walk and she needed to do could that for her internship.>> Okay. So you have employees that are out >> AUDIENCE: These are students.>> SALOME HEYWARD: Oh, students that have attendance issues related to flareups of their disabilities?>> AUDIENCE: Right.>> And well, in the law, institutions are required to modify their attendance policies. As an accommodation. For students with disabilities.But here's the rub, as you say: At some point, if the student misses too many classes like there was a case I worked on recently where the student missed there were 42 sessions in a semester and she was out 66Well, at some point 36. At some point now, even if we relax as a reasonable accommodation our attendance policy, the student is not qualified and it's not entitled to a grade in that class.So the issue that we tend to have with attendance is how do we build a fence around it. And by that I mean it's really important for your disability services folks who are working with you to provide accommodations to students to have a clear understanding of the nature of the disability.So you need to know what are the manifestations of the condition, how frequent over the past couple of years there have been flareups. If there's something unique about what the student is going through right now that makes it particularly difficult for them health wise.And causes them to be out. And then, based on that information, you you have to decide whether relaxing the attendance policy is the appropriate accommodation or whether it's something like a medical leave is the more appropriate accommodation.For example, you know, there was a case in which a student had a seizure disorder. And they had to change his medication.And because of the adjustment period, it made more sense for them to pro vied the student a provide the student a medical leave without penalty than to say okay, we're going to relax the absentee policy because there was no way to ensure that the student would be in class a sufficient amount of time given what was going on with his health.So what you're trying to do when you're relaxing attendance policies is making sure that you accommodate the student but at the same time, you're not putting yourself in a situation where the student essentially doesn't come to class.And you know, now you're trying to justify that okay, I'm just going to show up for the final exam and a couple of classes but I missed 36 classes.So you have to you know, do the proper balance by making sure you understand the nature of the condition. And even if you relax the attendance policy at some point, the student if they miss too many classes, and you have to provide them notice of this up front they're not going to be qualified. You know, to receive a grade in that particular course. Yes.>> AUDIENCE: To follow up on that, similar, I think this gets very dicey. At what point should one involve someone else, disability services or ADA compliance officer, in having that conversation or being the person who actually facilitate that conversation?>> SALOME HEYWARD: If the student is saying it's because of a health condition, and they're asking the institution to relax or the program to relax the attendance policy, then you're pretty much in a situation where you need to involve your disability services office. Because >> AUDIENCE: Central campus.>> SALOME HEYWARD: Because unless you have departmentalwide ADA people, because some institutions have that. They have a centralized person but then they have departmental or area ADA folks. And they pretty much handle everything unless they have to kick it upstairs.But the second that the student is saying oh, because of my medical condition, I need to you to relax the attendance policy, you know, that's pretty much an accommodation request.So that now you would need to initiate that discussion with whoever has that responsibility as a part of your program or your law school. Many professional schools have their own ADA person as a part of the school. So that would be then the person who would who would be having that conversation with the student as opposed to the central ADA person. I mean, for you know, for many institutions that are large, the central ADA person is really the consultant to the other folks. That are inhouse for the individual schools.Any other questions or comments before we're done?Anything else we need to talk about?Yes, sir?>> AUDIENCE: Ask a little about this morning. But international obligations, I focus on international activities and locations. You mentioned it's U.S. law doesn't apply overseas. But UW image does. And that follow through at university centers and university offices or extensions, any recommendations, advice, experiences?>> SALOME HEYWARD: Well, I mean generally, the advice that I give college or university abroad programs or international programs is that you know, the best approach is your student, your program, your obligation.Your employee, your workplace, your obligation.So that what you're trying to do within the environment that you control is to make that good faith effort to provide access and to accommodate either your students or your employees even if they do find themselves in an international environment.What makes and we talked about this earlier. What makes this issue a little more dicey are for those of us who are employers, interesting, is that the courts and the federal enforcement agencies don't tend to agree with each other on this issue.You know, for years and years the Department of Education would not answer the question of whether a law the law applied to study abroad programs or international programs. And finally, I guess about 8 or 9 years ago, they finally answered the question. They said no, it doesn't apply because it's a U.S. statute and it doesn't apply in an international environment. Or in another country.However, as I said to you earlier today, we have at least two courts, two federal court decisions where the courts have absolutely said to institutions, you're obligated to accommodate your students or your employees in your program or workplace in another country. So it's sort of there's a difference of opinion between the courts and the enforcement agencies on this. Other things we want to talk about?Other issues or questions?Yes, ma'am.>> AUDIENCE: I was just wondering what the institution did with the open courseware problem.>> SALOME HEYWARD: They drug their feet and they did it, you know, because for them with every single lecture going up and they had no control over individual faculty members, it was sort of like the elephant in the room. And how do you eat an elephant?And so basically, they spent a lot of time arguing and debating about it. And never really fixed the problem. Because a part of the issue when you have faculty that everything goes up, somebody has to manage and it's sort of a there are a lot of links in that chain.There has to be your instructional design team that provide training and support to your faculty to, you know, tell them what the standards are for the institution and help them achieve those standards.And then once things are placed up, then you have to constantly pay attention because you know as well as I do, you know, courses will go up online courses, distance learning courses, things will go up on Web sites that when they started out, they were accessible but then people changed stuff. And suddenly, they're not accessible any more.Or we change the platform or we you know, any number of things you can change that interfere with access, if somebody isn't constantly minding the store. And the difficulty for institutions is there is finding who is going to constantly keep their finger on the pulse of what happens institutionwide to make sure that, you know, things that were accessible are suddenly not accessible any more.And how do we make sure that our faculty are adhering to the standards that are out there and published? And how do we make sure we provide the necessary support for them so they can achieve compliance? And there are any number of places in that chain where we can drop the ball. And frequently institutions do.And it depends on resources and priorities. Other questions or comments?I think we're done. Thank you.(Applause) >> BREE CALLAHAN: So, if you want her PowerPoint slides, let me know. I have a piece of paper up here. We can email them tout to you possible out to you possibly tomorrow. Or if you RSVP'd, I'll send them to everybody who RSVP'd as well. ................
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