You can learn about federal laws to protect individuals with disabilities from discrimination on the basis of their disabling conditions.
Section 504: Rehabilitation Act of 1973
“No otherwise qualified individual with a disability in the United States, as defined in section 705 (20) of this title, shall, solely by reason of his or her disability, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance…”
Section 504 applies to those entities that receive federal funds, so most institutions of higher education are subject to its provisions. Federal funds include grant monies awarded to faculty and staff as well as federal financial aid programs.
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990 and the 2008 Amendments
- Civil Rights legislation protects against discrimination based on disability status
- Covers employment, public entities (schools), public accommodations, telecommunications
- 2008 amendments broaden disability definition
Section 508 (1998 & 2017)
Section 508 is an extension of the ADA, requiring telecommunications and online classrooms to offer equal opportunities to all students, including those with disabilities.
Differences in Sections 504 & 508
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Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. is another important regulations and guidelines to note. They are part of a series of web accessibility guidelines published by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the main international standards organization for the Internet. They are a set of guidelines that specify how to make content accessible. The current version, WCAG 2.0, was published in December 2008 and became an ISO standard, ISO/IEC 40500:2012 in October 2012.
If you are interested in accessibility-related legal cases in higher education such as the Kindle case, click here.
Our Responsibilities
22.2% of adults (18 and over) in the United States identify as having some type of disability (CDC, 2015) and 11% of higher education students in 2011-12 reported having a disability (USDOE, 2015). Many more choose not to disclose. It is our legal duty to make sure that we are not discriminating against learners from our lack of knowledge or understanding. In other words, with all these laws, we are responsible for holding to these accessibility standards. As an educator, however, we know that our responsibilities should go beyond the laws. All these raised standards can actually benefit more diverse learners with or without disabilities since learners have different learning styles. This is more important and meaningful In the online courses where identification of students’ disability is less evident and easy with limited contact. Ultimately for better learning experiences and outcomes, we should be more attentive to inclusive and flexible universal design of our courses regardless of different delivery mode. Furthermore, it needs to be done proactively so that learners can have equal access and feel more included from the moment they start taking a class.
If you have any questions or suggestions on this topic, please contact Jinhee Choo or eLearning@business.illinois.edu.