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I'm Mike Elledge, I'm Associate Director of
what's now called Usability
slash accessibility
research and consulting, instead of UAC.
And this is Christine Moore who's from our Office of Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives.
That's right.
Can you all hear me, is this working? No?
Is it turned on? Probably not.
I feel very safe, I'm in a room of techies, I feel like I can...
This does look like it's on. Maybe put it closer?
Ok we'll adjust. Yes it's working. It is?
Ok, you can hear me.
Christine's the Assistant Director for Institutional
Equity. I am. Good afternoon. How are you?
Good, how are you?
So it's a little intimidating talking about technology in this room
especially since I am not what you'd call adavanced
in that area, but I know some of you and you know that sitting in the back.
But I can talk about the law, I can do that. So we will do that for a couple of minutes
and hopefully
Mike can talk about the policy a little bit; Karen's here to answer some questions.
And
we'll go from there, and we're all good, we're not going to shut down. So
web accessibility, how many of you feel like you kind of have a good handle on what the law says
as opposed to what our policy says?
Couple of you?
Oh many of you. Okay I can talk fast and breeze through this.
Um
I'll do a quick overview and if you have specific questions I'll try to hurry and we can get to those.
The statutes involved
in web accessibility,
kind of the legal overview are the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act.
We're covered under both as an institution of higher ed, we're public, we're covered by Title II
of the ADA. Title I covers employment, Title III: public accommodations.
Title II is really the provision that says we need to make sure
that our programs and services are accessible.
The Rehabilitation Act really mirrors Title II. We were covered by that prior to
the ADA, passed in 1990.
The ADA's twentieth anniversary is this year.
So what do these statures require, what do they say?
Both really, of course specifically with regards to what we're talking about--
web accessibility--
the statutes talk about providing qualified individuals with disabilities equal
access to programs and services unless doing so would
constitute a fundamental alteration. And as you can guess, there's lots and lots of
cases
flying around about what fundamental alteration means, what equal access means. We'll talk about that in
a minute.
But that's kind of the broad dictate; equal access.
Okay so what about web sites?
Does this requirement cover web sites? And we have a great answer which is,
probably...
no definitive answers yet. Lots of indications--a great legal answer. And it's true. We
really, it's a developing area. A lot of times the law kind of is trying to play
catch-up in technology with
respect to where technology is concerned.
And I think that's where we are. We have a good set of standards as you know, under
508 with respect to the specific statutes that we're covered by.
We don't have a specific requirement yet that says, "Yes
you are; we're talking about your websites in particular". Just this kind
of broader equal access to programs and services.
So what are the indications that we are seeing that make us think
we better get out ahead of the game and make sure that we are accessible with respect
to the web.
One of them is the Office of Civil Rights. Anyone familiar with the Office of Civil Rights?
That is the group
within the Department of Education who would come to campus if there was a complaint,
an issue
someone raised with respect to our website
not being accessible. They would be the body who would come and investigate and make a determination.
And they
have done this in a lot of other campuses, not here yet,
but a lot of other campuses where they've issued guidance,
guidance in terms of their language they used in the settlement agreements.
So we have some indication from the Office of Civil Rights that, yes
we actually consider the web as part of that program and service we're talking about and
the accessibility requirements in Title II
apply to you, higher ed.
Equal access with respect to communication. Title II actually, in its regulations uses
the term,
it specifically talks about communication and it uses the term
"communication must be as effective as communications with others".
And I have the site there.
What the OCR has done is spend a lot of time talking about kind of what this means, what
equally effective communication is,
and I have some bullet points
on the next slide.
What do they consider equally effective
or
as effective?
They look at timeliness, accuracy, provision in a manner in medium appropriate to the
significance of the message.
Flexibility, comparable burden,
audience will have a variety of needs that should be considered. Those are factors we have to looked to
to say you know, what would the OCR if they came here, what would they be asking about,
what would they be looking for. And it kind of goes back to, if you remember,
when this policy was ruled out we kind of talked about
the difference between providing
alternative format, alternative material as opposed to making the website accessible.
And what the OCR has said is, you know, we don't, first of all we don't want to see
you accommodate
case by case.
We want to see you make
the web basically accessible or in a broader context accessible, not simply
waiting for the response, the requests to come to us
as higher ed and then to respond to each one of those on a case by case. They're saying
you know the timeliness, the accuracy
if something is on our website that is for a student to, or a potential student
to look at and to make a determination about whether or not they want to come here, take
that course, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. If they don't have access to that or if they're visually
impaired or whatever the case may be, if they don't have access to that in the same way that others do
right 25/7, in the
comfort of their own home the way that we can all do it
what the OCR is saying is that's not
you know, as effective.
Where are we?
We have the OCR guidance a little bit.
You know,
again it's a developing kind of thing.
We know that that would be the body that would come into Michigan State and make
the determination about our websites.
We also know that the Department of Justice is
a body that kind of shares that responsibility with
the OCR in a way. And they have taken the same stand that OCR has. Yes web accessibility,
we're talking about the web as well.
In fact we just received
a letter of concern from the Department of Justice kind of asking about the
Kindle usage
and what we're doing about that.
And in that letter they are very specific, you know "We consider
technology to be included in our responsibility under the ADA and the Rehab Act and
we're talking about things like
looking at outside vendors and making sure you, as higher ed, have purchasing power, making
sure that you're having those conversations.
When you're purchasing to make sure that outside alternative, you know,
sources of software and that kind of thing
are accessible as well and not just kind of blaming it on the third party
software company."
So, lawsuits.
What's happened? In the context
of higher ed we have nothing at this point, basically. No real, good legal guidance.
What happens in a lot of these cases is we settle prior to getting that good legal
opinion, so we have a couple of
oops.
I'm almost done, oh
no but we don't have my slide with the jail.
That was my favorite one. That was the best slide of all.
That was the best slide of all. Is it going to restart automatically, Jason? Will it? Alright.
Now I can talk really slow until it comes up.
Um
the lawsuits that we; the two big ones that we can talk about in private industry are
Target, anyone heard of the Target lawsuit? Yea, a lot of you. And Southwest Airlines
is one we've also heard of
kind of on the flip side, actually having a decision out there that insinuates
that
webs aren't; websites, technology and internet is not considered kind of the more
brick and mortar
when we talk about public accommodations, so making that distinction.
So an opinion there that you could rely on but then we have all this other from OCR and the
Department of Justice.
And then the Target lawsuit of course was settled, but what we know there is
that that was a lawsuit filed by the National Federation for the blind. And what
we know there is that the court did not
dismiss the lawsuit right away, it allowed the lawsuit to continue past what was called a
request for a temporary
injunction right in the beginning of the lawsuit. And what the court said is that I see enough to be able to
to move on
and so there's some indication there, again
that the court's buying into
yes the web is considered program and service that you are going to have to make accessible and not
going for that brick and mortar distinction, at least right away. So we have some guidance
from the Target lawsuit. And obviously
know that Target spent a whole bunch of money on this settlement and
did in fact update their website
to make
more accessible than it was.
I think that that Target lawsuit had something like,
I think they reviewed the
fifteen top pages and said something like 287 altegs were missing
and a whole bunch of
so it was; and then they said it was 80 percent of what was coming up in the screen reader was coming up
as gibberish. So
it was
you know and there's some fight about exactly what; because they had testimony from some
users through the screen readers who said it was fine; others;
and it only took an hour to shop. Others were saying they were so frustrated they just you know,
walked away within five minutes.
So some distinction there, but
interesting lawsuit, something to keep
our eye on for the future. And then
my--I'm sure you can't see it--but my next slide is web developer liability. So what does this mean for me?
So you've talked about the law, I already knew that anyway.
You talked about, we're going to talk about the policy in a minute.
What does this mean for the web developers if we don't
follow the policy, if we are running afoul of
something?
What does that mean, Jail? Just kidding.
The, really under Title II
and the Rehabilitation Act
this is a program and service
requirement.
And what that really means; so there is individual liability in the employment context.
If Mike is a supervisor and I feel like he's discriminating against me because
of my disability, in Michigan,
could I individually name him and potentially
you know
win an award from him, individually? Yes.
In Michigan
the law has kind of shifted and there is that potential.
That's the employment side, under Federal Law, employment law that's not the case, it's
only Michigan.
But when we're talking about Title II and
504, there's no individual liability, that's just, it doesn't happen.
I talked to our attorney, a
person in the General Counsel's Office, and she said even if it
did there's a great indemnification policy.
And I am on tape saying that, so.
There's really no reason, legally, to be worried as an individual web
developer that you are going to run afoul with the law.
Now could the OCR come in
and want to interview you, question you, have you and your supervisor and your
whole group
really, you know, work through the kind of how did you do this, how did you? Sure,
that could happen but, you know, at that point it's going to be an entire university kind
of thing not really
any particular
unit, necessarily. So because we have the of policy to help out with kind of the
guidance.
And my last slide is--and I don't know, I'm probably over--
but what about section 508?
Section 508, I think it's confusing to people because it's not really,
it doesn't really govern us, right? So those great
standards that the Access Board put out
promulgated a whole bunch of really specific language that you all speak that doesn't mean anything
to me.
That
is not
a binding legal requirement on us as a university. What we've decided to do
as a university--which is what
the other big tens are doing for the most part--
is adopting part of section 508, part of WCAG as standards that we can all kind of
use as a way of speaking the same language about this stuff,
getting everyone on the same, you know,
language
about how to move forward, what, how to govern ourselves around what is accessible.
Because you know you could spend
all day talking about exactly what is accessible?
We don't have a lot of great binding guidance until we look to other good guidance that's out there
and that's what we try to do with policy. And
Mike can talk about that a little bit now.