Accessibility Laws

• Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA): Ensures equal rights for people with disabilities.
  • Title II (State & Local Governments)
  • Title III (Businesses, Nonprofits, Commercial)
• Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act: Requires comparable access & use of Information Technology for people with disabilities.
• Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act: Requires equitable opportunities for people with disabilities to participate in programs & services.
• OCIO USER-01-01-S (Formerly Policy 188): Requires Washington state agencies to provide individuals with disabilities equal access to electronic information and data comparable to those who do not have disabilities.

Why it Matters

More than 1 in 4 (28.7 percent) adults in the United States have a disability. (CDC)

• 5.5 percent of U.S. adults have a vision disability - with blindness or serious difficulty seeing even when wearing glasses
  • may use screen readers, braille display, color contrast, & zoom features
• 6.2 percent of U.S. adults are deaf or have serious difficulty hearing
  • may use captions & transcripts
• 12.2 percent of U.S. adults have a mobility disability 
  • may use speech-to-text & keyboard only
• 13.9 percent of U.S. adults have a cognitive disability 
  • may rely on simple, consistent layouts, & content in more than one form

Updated Federal Guidelines

In April of 2024, the Department of Justice Ruled an update to Title II of Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), officially called “Nondiscrimination On The Basis Of Disability; Accessibility Of Web Information And Services Of State And Local Government Entities”. This update did several things:

• Determined a specific standard of accessibility, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 AA (Brown Goldstein Levy)​​ (StateScoop)​.
• Added the inclusion of Third-Party Content. Websites and mobile apps maintained by private third parties on behalf of public entities must also meet these accessibility standards. (Brown Goldstein Levy)​.
• Exceptions include archived web content, pre-existing documents, limited third-party content, individualized password-protected documents, and preexisting social media posts. (Brown Goldstein Levy)​​ (StateScoop)​.
• Stated a compliance date of April 24, 2026 (for our college group).

Green River College Accessibility Information

• Green River's Accessibility Coordinators
• IT-3 Accessible Technology Policy
• Web Accessibility 
• Writing for Accessibility
• Disability Support Services
• Accessibility and Inclusivity Library Guide

New compliance measures have been introduced by the Department of Justice (DOJ) that will put additional pressure on public institutions like ours to be more mindful of making all our content accessible, including making sure that all videos are captioned. More about these new measures will be introduced in the coming months.

All videos you make should be captioned, either by yourself, automatic machine captions, or by our captioner. Keep the following things in mind. 

1. Any video recorded by or uploaded to Panopto will generate automatic machine captions (even in non-English languages). This is a good first step. However, machine captions are NOT guaranteed to be accurate nor fully meet ADA nor DOJ guidelines. The same is true of the machine captions provided by YouTube, Zoom, or any other video service that creates captions automatically.
   1. Watch your videos as if you were a student, with the audio muted and captions on, to get a true sense of the quality of the captions.

   2. Remember that grammar, punctuation, and spelling/capitalization matter, especially if you are learning material for the first time or are a non-native English speaker.

2. Important to note: Videos uploaded as a file directly into Canvas and embedded into a page will contain zero captions of any kind. Canvas does NOT have an automatic captioning engine. Unless you create and upload your own captions to these videos, there are no captions whatsoever.

   1. If you are creating videos as an .mp4 and uploading them directly into Canvas, please email our captioner for assistance in captioning that material. 

   2. Best practice is to use Panopto. Please contact eLearning or browse our knowledge base for information on how to use Panopto, if you'd like more information. 

3. To meet the accessibility requirements of our students with the greatest needs first, any instructors receiving an accommodation request will be moved to the top of the queue. Please contact our captioner directly if you receive such a notice from a student/DSS. We will work with you and DSS to help address their needs.

4. The next highest priority will be given to content delivered asynchronously, especially if you are planning to use the content again in the future.

5. The lowest priority will be given to lectures that are delivered to a live class and recorded for archival. Please consider carefully whether or not archival of the material is necessary, as all video materials provided to students need to be captioned.

   1. Note: If you are giving live lectures in Zoom, you can utilize the live transcript function to provide synchronous captions during the recording session. These captions will not be perfect, since it is machine generated. However, If you would like to provide that extra layer of access during your live online lectures, it is available. If you have questions about how to turn that feature on, contact eLearning for further instructions or check here, How to turn on Live Transcription in Zoom.

Remediation & Review Request Form

Do you have difficult files that need accessibility remediation? Are you using a tool or website that you aren't certain is accessible? Ask eLearning and the Excellence in Teaching Collaborative (ETC) to remediate or review by submitting a request.

Request Captioning Support

If you would like help professionally captioning your lecture videos, click on the button below to be taken to the Request Captions form. Fill out the form. The captioner will add the materials to the queue. If there are questions regarding your request, the captioner will contact you directly for more information. 

State Accessibility Checklists

In a partnership between SBCTC and the staff at multiple state institutions, checklists have been created to help ensure documents created at the state colleges are accessible.

• Canvas Checklist
• Microsoft Word Checklist
• Microsoft PowerPoint Checklist
• Microsoft Outlook (Email) Checklist

Color Contrast Checkers

Use one of the following contrast checkers to make sure that the contrast between your text and its background is sufficient. WCAG 2.1 AA standards for contrast state that body text must have a contrast ratio of 4.5:1 against their background.

• Color Contrast Check
• WebAIM Contrast Checker
• Coolors Color Contrast Checker
• Convertico Image Color Picker, Palette Generator, and Color Contrast Checker
• Green River College Contrast Grid

This tool can help you pick a palette based on a specific hex code color or generate random palettes that are accessible. 

• Accessible Color Palette Generator

• Creating Accessible Flyers