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Postsecondary Education
Postsecondary Education
The laws that covered secondary education may no longer apply to postsecondary education. While the Vocational Rehabilitation Act and ADA still apply, the IDEA and NCLB/ESSA no longer does, and all legal decisions are now in the hands of the student. In addition, there are a few added laws to help protect the rights of students with disabilities while they attend post-secondary institutions. The most important note to take away from these laws is that the transition from secondary to postsecondary shifts a student from laws where they are entitled to services to laws where they are eligible for services if they self-disclose their disability and that parents are no longer entitled to be notified of anything except for those parents who maintain legal guardianship of an adult dependent with disabilities. For more information about the law in each segment, click the link(s) in the title.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Title II covers all federally funded public institutions. For both Title II and Title III, there are rules for building, grounds, and parking access. It also not only includes access to physical classroom materials but those online, and it includes access to performances and extracurricular activities. For anything that the postsecondary institution offers, all students must receive the same or equitable benefits in a timely manner. Policies, practices, and services should be reasonably modified and auxiliary aids and services should be provided, at no cost, to ensure ease of access and equal benefit. Transportation and buildings must follow accessibility guidelines in the ADA. Any communication (such as email or classroom instruction and materials) must be delivered in a manner that is both timely and equally effective, which means live closed captioning must be precise or qualified ASL interpreters must be present for lectures if required as an accommodation. Videos [with accessible transcripts] and images should be described for people with visual impairments and accessible documents must be given on the day such images and documents are presented. All materials used must also have "substantially equivalent ease of use," which means they must work seamlessly with the software or hardware that provides access. Finally, grievance procedures must be publicly listed as well though sometimes complaint procedures may be difficult to find on a school's website. While Title II covers all federally funded public institutions, Title III covers those private institutions that receive more than $10,000 in federal funds. It is not as strict in its guidelines due to private institutions not generally having the money that public institutions have. While parts of ADA allow for service animals, emotional support animals are not necessarily included. Finally, universities have the right to deny requests for accommodation if it has unreasonable costs, substantially changes the course, or lowers the academic standards of the course.
The Vocational Rehabilitation Act is a Civil Rights Law, which means that it won't provide funding, but if a postsecondary institution receives federal funding at all, they are required to follow mandates within the Vocational Rehabilitation Act. This means that postsecondary institutions must not discriminate in policies or actions, admissions and recruitment, reasonable accommodations and modifications, assistive technology, auxiliary aids and services, and programs of the educational institution. Students who are "otherwise qualified" must receive full and equal benefits of all programs and services within the institution the same as their peers receive to the greatest extent possible.
While the wording of the Vocational Rehabilitation Act Section 508 does not change from secondary to postsecondary, it may impact students differently, especially as more colleges turn to hybrid or online instruction. Minimal adherence to this law is often not adherence in the federal courts, so special attention needs to be made for full compliance. In addition to websites accessed by students and faculty, universities must ensure that their public-facing websites (those completely available to the public) are accessible. They must follow the WCAG guidelines mentioned in the previous section. They must have policies for accessibility across all information and communications technology used, including actions related to purchasing, acquisition, content creation, website development, tools, and testing.
The Higher Education Opportunity Act (2008) is a reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of 1965, and as amended in 2020, provides funding for assistive technology, accessible materials, and technical assistance centers, and Teach to Reach Grants, which focus on training faculty to improve their instructional quality for students with disabilities. It also creates model comprehensive transition and postsecondary (CTP) programs for students with intellectual disabilities attending higher education. Overall, the Higher Education Opportunity Act is about putting an opportunity for higher education into the hands of more individuals. Additionally, UDL was mandated to be taught in teacher preparation and within higher education technology.
The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act is a reauthorization or amendment of the Workforce Investment Act. It provides training, education, and support services for employment. This includes programs like Job Corps. The law prevents discrimination for those with disabilities who are "otherwise qualified" to participate and receive full and equal benefits from the program. It allows those with disabilities to participate in an extended year if they would meet graduation requirements. Programs provided by this law provide pre-employment counseling in job exploration and self-advocacy as well as workplace readiness.
The Fair Housing Act on a college campus means that the residence halls must comply with reasonable requests for accommodations from a student with a disability, from a different bed to the ability to keep a service animal to a room with an air conditioner at no extra cost to the student. As usual, this applies to those whose disability "substantially limits one or more life activities." Students should be able to make this request directly to the residential life office. Students will require documentation to prove their disability, but often this is the same documentation for disability services. This law also applies to emotional support animals; however, the student must show a documented need and the animal must be kept clean, vaccinated, and under control at all times. Students will be required to pay for any damages the service animal causes. The student's right to have the animal does not take away other students' rights to a clean, healthy, and quiet environment. Thus, many universities are very cautious about bringing service animals into the environment. Residential life offices are required to post their grievance policies for due process.
Like FERPA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) protects private [health] information from being disclosed without the patient's consent. This is important to remember when providing documentation for disability services. It is the student's responsibility to release documentation (often in the form of a letter or other record that could include diagnosis, functional limitations for living and learning on campus, type, severity, and frequency of symptoms, expected progression, and side effects that may occur with medicine) proving the disability to the school. This may mean signing paperwork to release this information to the school's disability services office. Remember that a person's disability cannot be the reason for non-admission and this information cannot go to anyone except the person or office listed on the HIPAA form.
In addition section 1557 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act prohibits discrimination, denial of participation, or exclusion of benefits based on disability for any health clinic that receives federal funding or is operated by an entity that receives federal funding. This should include the campus health center.
While Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is a civil rights act that prevents discrimination against women in education, it also provides processes for reporting such discrimination, including acts of sexual violence and harassment, which people with disabilities are often less likely to report and more likely to experience. It is important to note the crossover here in that Title IX rules must provide protection and accommodations for people with disabilities to eliminate barriers in reporting such acts and provide assistance when needed in a timely manner. In addition, Title IX allows the treatment of pregnancy as a temporary disability.
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