The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced today it is launching a new “technical assistance initiative” to assist schools, districts, state education agencies, libraries, colleges and universities in making their websites and online programs accessible to individuals with disabilities.

Through a series of webinars, OCR will provide information on website accessibility, including suggestions for design decisions that schools should adopt to ensure that their online programs, services and activities are accessible to individuals with disabilities.

OCR will offer the first webinar on the following dates:

            Webinar I:   May 29, 2018, at 1:00 p.m. EDT

            Webinar II:  June 5, 2018, at 1:00 p.m. EDT

            Webinar IIIJune 12, 2018, at 1:00 p.m. EDT

If you are interested in participating in any of these webinars, please send your request to OCRWebAccessTA@ed.gov; include your name, preferred webinar date, and contact information. 

OCR has also offered to conduct personalized interactive webinars with individual districts. In advance of the personalized webinar, OCR staff will identify a sampling of website accessibility concerns that currently impede access to the district’s online programs. OCR will discuss those concerns and ways to address them with the district during the webinar. If your district is interested in participating in one of those webinars, please send your request to OCRWebAccessTA@ed.gov.

Information regarding the scheduling and registration for webinars is available on OCR's Disability Discrimination website page.  

Posted by Sara C. Clark on 5/18/2018