Michigan woman fights for accessible websites in U.S. school districts
Lori Higgins,
Detroit Free Press 12 a.m. EDT July 4, 2016
Web site accessibility
A Franklin special education advocate has filed hundreds of web site
accessibility complaints against school districts and other agencies.(Photo:
Creatas,
Getty Images)
School districts across the U.S., be warned: If your websites aren't accessible
to people with disabilities, Marcie Lipsitt is ready to take action.
Lipsitt, a Franklin resident and an outspoken special-education advocate, has
been on a one-woman crusade, filing hundreds of federal complaints against
schools, school districts, state education departments and other public
agencies nationwide if she finds their websites aren't accessible to people with
vision and hearing disabilities.
Common problems include websites missing text that describes images to blind or
visually impaired people who use special software, content that can only
be used by people who have a mouse, and videos that aren't captioned or aren't
accurately captioned.
"I will file as long as I need to file," Lipsitt said. "I'm hoping my efforts
will inspire others to file these complaints. If one person files in every
school district, wow, we'd have tens of thousands of accessible school
districts."
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Her crusade is getting action: Of the 400 complaints Lipsitt has filed — most
of them within the last six months — the federal Office of Civil Rights that
is part of the U.S. Department of Education has opened investigations into
about 175.
And so far, the federal office has entered into resolution agreements with
nearly 20 schools, school districts and education departments.
Eleven of those were highlighted in a
news release last week
from the education department, which praised them for voluntarily entering into
an agreement.
"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 civil rights, said in the news
release.
Lipsitt has filed complaints against the largest school districts in the
nation, and every state education department. The civil rights office has opened
an investigation into Detroit Public Schools. And it has entered into
resolution agreements with the Macomb and Oakland intermediate school districts.
Lipsitt's crusade is getting attention around the nation. She regularly
receives messages from parents or advocates in other states asking her to file
complaints
against their school districts or look into whether their websites are
accessible.
Among them was Cheryl Poe of Virginia Beach, Va. Poe is president and founder
of Advocating 4 Kids, which provides advocacy services to the parents of
children
who receive special education services. When she heard about Lipsitt's efforts,
she asked her for help.
"Marcie taught me how to file a website complaint," Poe said. "I'm just proud
of her efforts."
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Lipsitt said what is particularly disappointing is that some schools that cater
to students with visual and/or hearing disabilities have non-compliant websites.
One of the recent resolution agreements was with the Montana School for the
Deaf and Blind.
"Those are the most outrageous to me," Lipsitt said. "Think about it. You have
children who are blind or visually impaired and deaf or hard of hearing.
And the websites for these children are inaccessible?"
She blames, in large part, companies that design websites for schools.
"The hope is that superintendents will band together and boycott these web
designers that have put them into this out-of-compliance predicament," Lipsitt
said. "The problem is I can’t file complaints against web designers and the OCR
can’t go after them."
Lipsitt's effort began with the Michigan Department of Education. More than a
year ago, the MDE entered into a resolution agreement with the federal office,
thanks to a complaint Lipsitt filed in February 2014.
Lipsitt praised the MDE for its response.
"They have been working diligently at making their website accessible," she
said. "They are taking this very, very seriously."
"At the end of the day, I know what I’m doing is a drop in a leaking ocean,"
Lipsitt said. "I want people to think about the fact that we have civil rights."
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Contact Lori Higgins: 313-222-6651 or lhiggins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Source:
http://www.freep.com/story/news/education/2016/07/04/michigan-woman-fights-accessible-websites-us-school-districts/86526716/
