Granite School District reaches settlement on website accessibility violations

Granite School District reaches settlement on website accessibility violations

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SALT LAKE CITY — The Granite School District has reached a settlement with the U.S. Department of Education to improve its website's accessibility to people with disabilities, federal authorities announced Wednesday.

The school district's agreement promises a thorough look at current practices and preempts a more comprehensive federal investigation of the website if it meets certain accessibility requirements within the next 18 months.

The Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights said it received a complaint, leading to the examination of the school district's website. The website lacked text descriptions that detail important images to blind and low-vision users, the department's Office for Civil Rights said in a statement.

Parts of the site could only be accessed by users who are able to operate a computer mouse, further limiting those who are blind, have low vision or lack necessary motor skills to use the device properly, the office said. Some text was too difficult to read for low vision users and videos were not adequately captioned for deaf users, the federal review concluded.

"These barriers deny persons with disabilities access to programs, services, and activities offered on the website and may impede the district’s communications with persons with disabilities," the Department of Education said in a letter sent to the school district.

Also Wednesday, the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights announced agreements with schools or school districts in Nevada, New Mexico, Montana, Washington and Alaska. Agreements were also reached with the state or territory education departments in Guam, Nevada and Oregon, as well as the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. Those bodies also volunteered to resolve complaints about their websites.

“As schools, school districts, states, and territories turn to the internet as a way to provide relevant and up-to-date information to their audiences in a cost-effective manner, they must make sure they are not inadvertently excluding people with disabilities from their online programs, services, and activities,” Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary for the Office for Civil Rights, said in a statement.

The accessibility flaws were reported as violations under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

Granite School District is required to select a qualified auditor to identify problems with the website, assume new policies and procedures designed to increase accessibility and ensure all future content meets federal standards. The district has also been asked to provide website accessibility training to all applicable employees.

The Granite School District is scheduled to submit its first of multiple reports on those changes on Aug. 1.

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Ben Lockhart

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