National Association for the Deaf Position Paper:

Responsibility for Cost of Communications Access Services for Students Who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing at Colleges and Universities

This position paper reflects the views of NAD, but not necessarily those of PEPNet. Members of the PEPNet community may want to share views and concerns related to this position paper. We encourage readers to meet with local members of NAD to share good working relationships with Vocational Rehabilitation and emphasize the need for cooperation and collaboration. A contact list from the NAD Board and the Office of the Executive Director is provided at the end of this position paper.

It is the position of the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) that American colleges and universities are responsible for the cost of communication services for students who are deaf or hard of hearing. This allows for equal access as specified by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Such services include, but are not limited to, sign language and oral interpreter services, computer assisted real time captioning services, and related communication accommodations that are determined by the needs of individual students.

Historically speaking, many colleges and universities have fully accepted their responsibility to provide communication access in order to meet the needs of deaf or hard of hearing students, which the NAD applauds. Other institutions have reluctantly accepted this responsibility by providing services that are less than adequate, thus jeopardizing the academic or vocational success of their students. In some states, colleges or universities and state vocational rehabilitation (VR) agencies have worked together to resolve the cost issues of providing communication access at these public institutions.

The NAD recognizes that ADA compliance is a major financial concern for colleges and universities. However, the NAD also finds that this law specifies that public institutions like colleges and universities have a full responsibility and legal obligation to provide communication access.

While the NAD is sympathetic to the concerns of colleges and universities regarding the high cost of providing communication access for students who are deaf and hard of hearing, it advocates spreading the cost among all students, not just those with different types of disabilities. These costs should be factored into the overall institutional budget, in which case the cost of access becomes less burdensome and not discriminatory to a student with a disability.

This principle is true today for television and telephone access, for example. All consumers of television programming now pay for the closed captioning chip. With this chip, all television sets have closed captioning features at no additional cost to consumers who are deaf or hard of hearing, regardless of whether or not this feature is used by the general public. Likewise, in many states all telephone consumers, including those who are deaf or hard of hearing, pay small monthly surcharges to cover the costs of telephone relay services and/or specialized telecommunications equipment distribution programs. This allows consumers who are deaf and hard of hearing to have equal access to the telephone system.

In other words, the public is making services and programs accessible by providing access in compliance with the ADA, while spreading the cost of making those accommodations to all consumers of a given service or entity. The ultimate benefit of this shared cost method is that everyone in the public benefits from better communication access.

To ensure that students who are deaf or hard of hearing will not experience communication access barriers as they enroll in or continue their training at colleges or universities, the NAD encourages development of interagency agreements between colleges or universities and state VR agencies to outline responsibilities. These interagency agreements should clarify that the state VR agency will help fund communication access services if colleges or universities are unwilling or unable to do so, and that state VR agencies can seek reimbursement as outlined in the 1998 Amendments to the Vocational Rehabilitation Act (as contained in the Workforce Investment Act of 1998).

The NAD believes that state VR agencies should focus more on providing rehabilitation services to eligible consumers, including those disadvantaged deaf adults who cannot benefit from college training, rather than expending funds to ensure communication access in colleges and universities. It is not the role of state VR agencies to provide funds to public entities, including colleges and universities, in order to get them to comply with ADA requirements. Available funding for state VR agencies has been shrinking for decades, resulting in fewer consumers with disabilities receiving services. In addition, the cost of serving people with disabilities has risen faster than increases in federal funding.

Although there have been a number of court decisions in the past regarding Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which requires state VR agencies to share the cost of interpreter services for their deaf or hard of hearing clients who are attending colleges and universities, Section 504 was enforced during a time when the ADA was not yet a legal reality. These court decisions should thus not be used as a legal basis for colleges and universities to seek continued funding support from state VR agencies.

Therefore, the NAD believes that colleges and universities should earmark and commit appropriate institutional funding to cover the costs associated with various campus accommodations for their students with disabilities. Some schools may determine that they will need to pursue supplemental appropriations from state and/or federal governments to help cover some of the costs. The NAD is prepared to collaborate with state affiliates, national disability consumer organizations, and colleges or universities to obtain the funding needed to make colleges and universities fully accessible to students with disabilities, including those who are deaf and hard of hearing.

This position paper was approved by the NAD Board of Directors on January 31, 2000.

For more information contact:

Libby Pollard, president@nad.org

Kent Kennedy, vicepresident@nad.org

Dan Brubaker, secretary@nad.org

Mark Apodaca, treasurer@nad.org

Earnest Okwara, okwara@nad.org

Claudia Bergquist, bergquist@nad.org

Tom Kober, kober@nad.org

Susanna Bourgeois, bourgeois@nad.org

G. Leon Curtis, curtis@nad.org

Ron Herbold, herbold@nad.org

Andy Lange, lange@nad.org

Yvonne Dunkle, dunkle@nad.org

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