The U.S. Department of Education announced that its Office for Civil Rights has entered into an agreement with the University of Cincinnati to ensure that the school’s websites comply with federal civil rights laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of disability.
The agreement ends an OCR investigation and commits the 42,600-student public institution to providing equal access to educational opportunities for students with disabilities and to ensuring that the school’s websites are accessible to persons with disabilities, including students, prospective students, employees and visitors, according to the Department of Education.
“I thank the University of Cincinnati for agreeing to make its website fully accessible to its entire student population, as well as to parents and other members of the public, consistent with the law,” said Catherine E. Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights, in a press release. “Educational institutions must ensure that students with disabilities can access the educational opportunities and benefits of the institutions with substantially equivalent ease of use as students without disabilities.”
As part of its proactive investigation, OCR reviewed how accessible the university’s websites were to persons with disabilities, particularly those with sensory impairments who might use assistive technology to access the sites.
The agreement follows a similar arrangement that the department reached with Youngstown State University.
