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State Information Technology Accessibility Acts

From Jamie Berke, About.com GuideDecember 13, 2009

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Buried within the article "E-book access not so equal" from the University of Illinois was this paragraph of interest:

Students with hearing disabilities also need to use technology differently. Robert Radtke, junior in LAS, ran into problems in a few classes where the instructors did not add captions to class videos, despite the Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act that requires video captioning.

An Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act? This I had to research. According to the Illinois Department of Human Services this Act is like a section 508 for Illinois agencies AND public universities. Under Standards, video and multimedia products, I found this:

c. All video and multimedia that contain essential auditory information shall be open or closed captioned when provided to the public and/or required to be viewed by employees.
d. All video and multimedia productions that contain essential visual information shall be audio described when provided to the public and/or required to be viewed by employees.

I wonder what other states have similar legislation to mandate accessibility of video in public university classrooms? Oklahoma has a similar law, HB 2197. Oklahoma's law specifically refers to Web-based Intranet and Internet Information and Applications as well as Video and Multimedia Products.

Comments
December 15, 2009 at 7:48 am
(1) deaf services michigan says:

hello Jamie, thanks for this useful information.

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