ADA Section 508 Compliance on StudentLoans.gov?
- From: "Donald Marang" <donald.marang@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2010 02:52:34 -0400
Today I attempted to sign a Master Promissory Note on StudentsLoans.gov for my
daughter. It was one of the most important on-line transactions and worst
experience I ever had! This is a US Government site and as of July 1st, became
a monopoly because all of these loans are now directly serviced by the
government, not a variety of commercial banks. The entire site is what I would
call unusable for screen readers! The site and its sister site for filling out
the student's financial aid needs (FAFSA)require you to fill out forms. The
forms are nearly impossible to fill out! The biggest problem is a focus issue.
After filling out a field and pressing Tab, the focus moves randomly around
the page! Even signing in requires you to enter Social Security number, first
two letters of last name date of birth, and PIN. Both SSN and DOB require you
not to enter dashes or slashes and fill them in for you in a semi-secure
password field. The example says to enter in mm/dd/yyyy format, but if you do
the log in fails! Again, it is impossible to fill out more than two of these
fields without losing focus and returning to the top of the page or elsewhere.
I had someone from the hotline on the phone for two hours to simply
electronically sign a document!
I has similar and worse experiences on the site to create the PIN and to fill
out the long FAFSA application. For instance, there were at least three
definitions for how to calculate the number in your household. I needed to go
back into the FAFSA after completing and submitting the application. The page
to correct the form is very bizarre and has the information as previously
entered in a column and then a field in a second column to make the correction
appears if you click to change that piece of data. Again, the focus is a major
issue on this page. I was very careful about just changing the number in
household number. I found out later that night when calling their hotline a
completely different question, that the agent told me that there was no longer
a last name on the application! Since the last name and Social Security number
are part of the sign in process, it was impossible to correct on-line and had
to be handled by snail mail!
I thought all government sites had to be accessible by ADA law. These sites
are particularly Important to the blind! Is there a department of the
government to report such sites? What are the relevant regulations / laws in
this circumstance? What are the possible actions / reparations that can be
taken? I thought it was impossible to sue the federal government. However,
Social Security was recently required to send blind people letters on CD or
large print if requested. That was the result of some type of legal action.
Don Marang
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