The ADA: Helping Students from Elementary School to College

STORY BY CHARLES DERVARICS

From a grade school student trying to access an old school building to a college student needing new technology for advanced courses, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has provided fundamental access to American education. Whether to supplement existing law or to forge new protections, the ADA has served as a significant tool for students and parents.

“The ADA has empowered parents, created new expectations for students, and extended the horizon by miles and miles,” said John Kemp, president of The Viscardi Center, a nonprofit that seeks to improve education and employment among those with disabilities. As a result of the law, he added, “Parents have new hope for their children. It gives every person the feeling that they can have a wellrounded life.”

In its 25 years of existence, the law also has proven resilient in a changing educational environment. This is particularly true regarding technology, as the Internet and the growth in online learning – though groundbreaking for many students – can leave those with disabilities at a disadvantage unless implemented properly.

“Emerging technologies, including Internet-based learning platforms, are changing the way we learn, and we need to ensure that people with disabilities are not excluded or left behind,” said Eve L. Hill, deputy assistant attorney general for the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. Hill was a key point person in a 2013 ADA settlement between the federal government and a university on accessible course materials – one of many technologyrelated cases undertaken by the federal government in recent years.

Title II of the ADA prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities by all “public entities,” a group that includes local school districts and state education institutions. Title III of the law states that no individual can be discriminated against on the basis of disability in access to goods, services, or facilities in any place of “public accommodation,” including schools and colleges. Taken together, these sections seek to guarantee physical access to buildings along with access to needed services and transportation.

The law’s reach is broad in K-12 education. In 2012, about 6.4 million, or 13 percent, of students in America’s public schools had a disability, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. These figures are up from the 4.7 million, or 11 percent of public school students, who had a disability in 1990.

Experts say that the ADA plays a vital complementary role in K-12 alongside other laws and regulations such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which guarantees students with disabilities access to a “free appropriate public education,” according to Andrew Imparato, an attorney who is executive director of the Association of University Centers on Disabilities. To this foundation, ADA provides added protection on issues such as access to school buildings, summer programs, extracurricular activities, and access for parents. Unlike most federal education laws, ADA also applies to private schools.

“The 800-pound gorilla in K-12 is IDEA,” Imparato said. Nearing its 40th anniversary as a federal law, IDEA requires every public school to provide free, appropriate public education. When implementing the law, schools have promoted inclusion, or the integration of students with disabilities in traditional classroom settings with less emphasis on segregated pull-out classes for students with disabilities.

“If IDEA were implemented properly, we wouldn’t have to use ADA,” Imparato said. Nonetheless, ADA plays a needed role by ensuring students can access buildings and services. In addition, ADA can help students participate in extracurricular activities and summer programs while helping parents with disabilities overcome architectural and other barriers to visit schools and participate in school activities.

ADA also helps educators and the federal government navigate a changing landscape in American education. One new trend at the K-12 level is creation of charter schools, or public schools that operate separately from traditional public schools and often face fewer of the rules and regulations imposed on more traditional schools. The U.S. Department of Education last May released guidance stating that charters must conform with the same federal civil rights laws applied to other public schools. The guidance from the department’s Office for Civil Rights specifically states that charters must provide a free, appropriate public education for students with disabilities.

“Since our last guidance on the topic in 2000, thousands of new charter schools have opened,” said Catherine E. Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education. “This guidance underscores that charter schools must satisfy the requirements of the federal civil rights laws.”

For the years after high school, ADA has provided important protections for students pursuing college and university study. ADA has “greatly improved accessibility to the built environment,” Imparato said, thereby assuring that students can more readily access buildings, textbooks, and services. There also are more opportunities for both students and faculty members to gain accommodations related to their disability, he added. For students, these accommodations may include extra time on exams or curriculum materials in accessible formats.

To provide these services, colleges and universities may have an office dedicated to the support of students with disabilities. Typical is the Disability Support Services office at the College of Southern Maryland, whose website notes that the office goal is to “help eliminate physical, academic, technical and attitudinal barriers to help students reach their academic and career goals.” Its specific roles are to provide reasonable accommodations, maintain and protect confidentiality of student records, help the university community understand the ADA, provide training in the use of assistive technology, and act as liaison with state and local entities.

When lawmakers wrote the ADA 25 years ago, few could have predicted the explosive changes in technology that have occurred during the past quarter-century. As a result, one of the hot-button issues for the ADA and education is access to new technologies that help spur learning, particularly at the college level. Online course materials, distance learning, and electronic assignments are but a few of the many innovations that can pose a challenge for individuals with disabilities and educational institutions alike.

One high-profile case involved Louisiana Tech University, which faced allegations that it violated the ADA by using an online learning product inaccessible to blind or low-vision students. In this case, the student asked for help from the professor, who instead referred the issue to the online learning provider. When the company failed to fix the issue, the student went to the university office of disability services, a move that also did not resolve the problem.

The student then filed suit against the university, saying that this lack of access placed the student so far behind after one month that withdrawing from the course was the only option. The same student also contended that, in another course, accessible course materials were not provided in time for in-class discussions and exam preparation.

Under a settlement reached last year, the university made a commitment to offer only learning technology, web pages, and course content with nationally acceptable guidelines for access for those with disabilities. It also said it would make existing web pages and materials created since 2010 fully accessible. According to the U.S. Justice Department, the university also agreed to provide ADA training to staff and pay damages of $23,543 to the student.

According to the Justice Department, the case and similar ones go to the core of Title II of the ADA, which states that individuals with disabilities must have an equal opportunity to participate in programs and benefit from aids, benefits, or services provided. The U.S. Department of Education also is active on this issue. Its Office for Civil Rights in 2013 announced a settlement with the South Carolina Technical College System (SCTCS), the state's largest postsecondary education system, in which SCTCS and its 16 member colleges agree to deploy websites that are fully accessible to persons with disabilities.

During a compliance review, the civil rights office found that sites operated by SCTCS and two member colleges were not readily accessible to those who are blind or have low vision. As a result, the office said, the colleges were not complying with the ADA. Under the settlement agreement, the college system and its board agreed not only to provide full access to its websites but also to develop a resource guide with information about web accessibility requirements and to annually review the colleges’ websites to correct any issues with accessibility.

“Schools today rely on websites to register students, distribute course materials, collect homework, and administer quizzes,” said Seth Galanter, principal deputy assistant secretary for civil rights, speaking about this settlement. “Students with disabilities cannot be denied the same opportunity to access these services on the web 24/7 from anywhere.”

The timeliness of services to college students with disabilities is a focal point in these cases. An agreement between the University of California-Berkeley and the nonprofit Disability Rights Advocates last year paved the way for changes in that campus’ approach to students who are blind, have low vision, or have disabilities that make it difficult for them to access the campus library. Under a settlement, Berkeley pledged that students who request materials in alternative media will receive textbooks within 10 business days and receive course readers in 17 business days. The university also planned to launch a new print conversion system so students can request a book that is then converted into digital format for their use.

E-books and e-readers also are a significant issue for college students with disabilities. In 2009, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) filed a complaint against Arizona State University in U.S. District Court after the university’s honors college distributed e-book readers in a two-semester course. The e-book reader was inaccessible to blind students because its menus and controls were displayed only visually without an audio option. The NFB said the policy violated Title II of the ADA. After much discussion, the university voluntarily agreed to end the e-book component of the course and agreed that it should work to address unnecessary barriers to books and other information via new technologies.

Following this ruling, the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice released joint guidance in which they expressed “concern” about how colleges may be using e-readers that lack a specific textto-speech function. “Requiring use of an emerging technology in a classroom environment when the technology is inaccessible to an entire population of individuals with disabilities … is discrimination promoted by the Individuals with Disabilities Act,” they said – unless there are accommodations or modifications so that individuals with disabilities have equal access.

But technology has not served as the only area of litigation regarding the ADA and higher education. In Georgia, an HIV-positive student accepted into Gwinnett College’s medical assistant program filed a complaint saying she was told to leave after one quarter and was told she was “a safety risk to others.”

The student claimed her exclusion was a direct violation of the ADA’s Title III, which prohibits places of public accommodation from excluding individuals with disabilities, including HIV. As part of a final settlement, the college removed HIV- and AIDS-related questions from its application and established new policies that it will not discriminate against HIV-positive students. It also promised to provide ADA training for all employees, with a particular focus on HIV.

The federal government sometimes has stepped in to overrule state interpretations of the ADA. In 2008, the Louisiana attorney general’s office concluded that McNeese State University was not required to have an accessible bathroom in its main student union building. The U.S. Justice Department initiated a compliance review under the ADA. A settlement between the Justice Department and the university provides that the institution will bring all newly constructed facilities into compliance with the ADA, develop a campus-wide physical access plan to ensure compliance with Title II of the ADA, designate an ADA coordinator, and display accessibility information on its websites. (More court rulings are profiled in the sidebar, “Court Rulings Enhance Focus.”)

Spurred by court cases as well as input from the field, the federal government has updated its ADA rules. The U.S. Department of Justice in 2010 issued new rules for the law. One key change was that the ADA standards that apply to hotels must apply to dormitories and residence halls at colleges and universities as well. Other changes affecting colleges and universities require direct access for individuals with disabilities to stages from audience seating areas, more detailed requirements on the purchase of accessible stadium tickets, greater accessibility for recreation areas such as swimming pools, and a larger number of accessible entrances.

*The impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act on education continues to reverberate through the nation’s courts, even 25 years after the ADA’s enactment. Here is a sampling of court challenges during the past decade, including many that brought federal government intervention.

*The U.S. Justice Department and the Michigan Paralyzed Veterans Association filed suit to challenge the lack of accessible seating at the University of Michigan’s football stadium, then considered the largest college football venue in the United States. As part of the 2008 settlement agreement, the university pledged to add more than 200 wheelchair and companion seats to the stadium. It also planned to add additional wheelchair seating in luxury boxes and suites.

*The Justice Department reached a settlement with Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, concluding that students with food allergies and celiac disease can fully participate in the university’s meal plan. Under the ADA, food allergies may be a disability, the department ruled. Under the 2012 settlement, the university said it would amend its policies, develop individualized meal plans for students with food allergies, and provide readymade hot and cold gluten- and allergen-free food options.

*Mills College, a women’s college in Oakland, California, pledged to remove all architectural barriers to individuals with disabilities in existing facilities in a 2012 settlement with the Justice Department. A campus-wide survey in 2010 turned up 260 separate violations. Under the final agreement, the college planned to install or move grab bars and towel dispensers, adjust the force needed to open doors, install or adjust the slope of ramps, and adjust the height of existing bathroom facilities.

Moreover, the Justice Department also conducts detailed compliance reviews of access to college campuses. Under these 2010 rules, the department can begin these reviews and investigations under Title II of the ADA without a referral from the U.S. Department of Education or other entities.

With the gains attributed to the ADA and related laws, advocates for the disability community say the next challenge is to get more college-educated individuals into the workplace. Employment among adults with disabilities has not increased significantly since 1990, Kemp says. Currently, only about one in five adults with disabilities works full time, while another 13 percent work part time. But those with disabilities are breaking down barriers in education, which may be one factor in increasing employment down the road. “We have yet to crack the employment issue,” Kemp said. But advances in education, he noted, “are a good sign for the future.”