Legal Overview

... related to disability, and right at the beginning I want to deal with an issue that is often of great concern for faculty members, and that is their academic freedom. There is nothing in the laws related to disability that should impact your academic freedom. Academic freedom is a First Amendment right. If you read what Chronicle of Higher Ed or Inside Higher Education says about academic freedom you're going to find that it really is about what you say in the classroom or what you say in the online course as a way of instructing the content that you're teaching, and we are not talking about that. Your content is your content, and we are not going to have any effect or input on that. What we are talking about is whatever modality, whatever mode, whatever container that you're using to convey that content. That is what we need to be accessible. And I'm going to be talking about Section 508, and how Section 508 relates to creating accessible content. So this is civil rights law. And so what we're really talking about is having all of your students have the equal right to have access to whatever the content is that you're teaching. So what are the laws that apply here? The first is the Americans with Disabilities Act, the ADA, which many of you have probably heard of. It governs facilities in terms of parking spaces, in terms of ramps, curb cuts, elevators, all of that sort of thing. Title II applies to us as public institutions, and it has been around for many years. The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 is the other law that I'm going to talk about, and that is even older than the ADA. Most folks who are not dealing with facilities haven't really heard of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, but it has two sections that apply to us in the colleges that relate to disability law. The first is Section 504. Section 504 applies to us because of federal funding. Everyone who receives federal funding at the collegial level has Section 504 requirements. It is basically why you have a disability services office on your campus, is to deal with Section 504, and to deal with the needs of individuals with disabilities. It's very focused on individuals, both for staff and for faculty. There's another section in the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and that is Section 508. Section 508 is very different, we'll talk about that. It applies to infrastructure, and it applies under California State law. But basically, in a nutshell, disability law is actually part of civil rights law. So the ADA, as I mentioned, Title II applies to public facilities. It is the architectural standards that most people are very familiar with, and that is access. Whenever you're talking about infrastructure you're talking about access. The ADA provides access to facilities. There's another part, however, which is the Auxiliary Aids & Services part. Our shorthand way of talking about that is "accommodations". The accommodations are for individuals, allowing individuals to fully participate in whatever activities and education is available on campus. So Section 504 and Section 508 I'm going to be focusing on together as a strategy for meeting your legal obligations under the law. Section 504 of the ADA, in this area that we're going to be talking about with access to technology and access to courses are very similar. I'm going to focus on Section 504 because it has a few more teeth in terms of the law. It actually has pretty rigorous requirements as well as mandates, and it allows the ...