EDUCAUSE Continues to Support Accessible Instructional Materials Legislation

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was enacted on July 26, 1990, and is largely thought to be the most consequential piece of nondiscrimination legislation since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The purpose of the ADA is to "provide a clear and comprehensive national mandate for the elimination of discrimination against individuals with disabilities."

As the ADA was enacted prior to widespread use of the internet, the legislation does not specifically mention web accessibility or cover the internet. With that said, colleges and universities play an important role in ensuring that persons with disabilities have equitable access to educational and campus opportunities. As technology is now at the heart of institutional operations, ensuring that technology is accessible to persons with disabilities is a crucial aspect of evaluating accessibility across a campus. EDUCAUSE is proud to assist its members with best practices related to ensuring accessibility across the campus IT ecosystem and has worked with the IT Accessibility Community Group to develop a working draft of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. 

As the statute is silent on internet accessibility and courts have come to varying decisions around whether portions of the law are applicable to the virtual space, lawmakers have understandably been interested in legislating away the uncertainty. Take, for example, the Technology, Equality, and Accessibility in College and Higher Education (TEACH) Act, which was introduced in November 2013. While the bill was intended to cultivate the development of voluntary accessibility guidelines for postsecondary electronic instructional materials and related technology, the higher education community expressed concern that the proposal's attempt at doing so would be counterproductive in accomplishing its goals—to the detriment of students with disabilities and the institutions aiming to meet those students' needs.

Therefore, EDUCAUSE began working in 2014 with the American Council on Education (ACE), the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) to develop a legislative proposal capable of achieving the common goal of all three stakeholder groups: to produce sustainable and consistent progress in the accessibility of postsecondary electronic instructional materials. That collaborative process produced what is now called the Accessible Instructional Materials in Higher Education (AIM HIGH) Act, which would establish a commission of representatives from major stakeholder communities (including higher education) to develop voluntary accessibility guidelines for postsecondary instructional materials and related technologies. The commission would also leverage its work on the guidelines to create a list of general IT accessibility standards that would be annotated to clarify their relevance to different aspects of higher education IT. To ensure a consensus-based approach, 75 percent of the commission members would need to approve the release of either resource.

The latest version of AIM HIGH also includes a new provision on voluntary guidelines for pilot testing of relevant materials and technologies—language that EDUCAUSE developed in concert with representatives from the NFB, ACE, AAP, and the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA). The pilot testing language replaces provisions included in previous iterations of the bill that created a legal safe harbor for the use of materials and technologies that fully conform with the developed guidelines. The safe harbor provision served as a hindrance in building wider support for the bill in the past, so EDUCAUSE and the organizations we worked with are hopeful that the alternative language will make the bill appealing to a larger set of lawmakers while providing EDUCAUSE members with a consensus framework to use in piloting new materials and technologies on their campuses. To ensure consensus, three-fourths of the commission would need to approve the pilot testing guidelines.

The AIM HIGH Act, championed by Congressmen Phil Roe (R-TN) and Joe Courtney (D-CT) in the US House of Representatives, and Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), and Jon Tester (D-MT) in the US Senate, awaits consideration in both chambers. Iterations of the bill have been included in both Republican and Democrat attempts to reauthorize the Higher Education Act; however, both reauthorization proposals were highly partisan and lack a real chance of crossing the finish line and becoming law.¹

EDUCAUSE continues to support the version of the bill introduced in the House and Senate and looks forward to working with House and Senate sponsors to move the bill through the legislative process and hopefully, one day, into law. In the meantime, EDUCAUSE remains committed to supporting its members in promoting accessibility of technology in the spirit of the ADA.

Note

1. Kathryn Branson, "Accessible Instructional Materials Legislation Reintroduced in the House of Representatives," Policy Spotlight (blog), EDUCAUSE Review, December 10, 2019. ↩

Kathryn Branson is a Senior Associate with Ulman Public Policy .