Human Resources - ADA and Reasonable Accommodations

Reference:  Americans with Disabilities Act of 1992

Great Falls College Montana State University provides equal opportunity to qualified employees and students, and to members of the general public who have a disability and provide reasonable accommodation as appropriate in employment, the application for employment, services, programs, and activities. Individuals with a disability are those who have a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activity, have a record of such impairment, or are regarded as having such impairment.

The college’s ADA coordinators are the Chief Student Affairs & Human Resources Officer and Director of Disability Services. The ADA coordinator must be contacted for assistance in all matters pertaining to compliance with this policy.

Before denying a request for disability accommodations, requiring a medical exam, or taking other action related to ADA requirements under this policy supervisors must consult with the ADA coordinator and obtain concurrence with the denial or action.

Physical and Program Accessibility

To assure equal opportunity, qualified individuals with disabilities will be provided reasonable accommodations and access to college services, programs, and activities in settings as integrated as possible, provided the access or accommodation will not result in an undue hardship or a fundamental alteration of a service, program, or activity.

Facilities designed, constructed, or altered after June 26, 1992, must be accessible and usable by persons with disabilities, and must conform to the accessibility standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines (ADAAG). Alterations to existing buildings will comply with ADAAG except where technically infeasible, for example, where a physical or site restraint prevents compliance or where compliance would require removal of a load-bearing part of a structure.

The college also will provide auxiliary aids and services to individuals with disabilities to enable them to communicate effectively with Great Falls College MSU and to receive the benefits of services, programs, and activities unless to do so will create an undue hardship or create a fundamental alteration of the services, programs, or activities.

Web Accessibility

Great Falls College MSU offices and departments creating Web sites, including course Web sites, should consider the following guidelines and aim for compliance, as feasible:

1. provide alternative texts for images, applets, and image maps

2. provide descriptions for important graphics, scripts, or applets if they are not fully described through alternative text or in the document’s content

3. provide textual equivalents for audio information (captioning)

4. make verbal descriptions of moving visual information available in both auditory and text form

5. make text and graphics perceivable and understandable when viewed without color

6. make moving, blinking, scrolling, or auto-updating objects or pages so they can be paused or frozen

7. make pages using the newer HTML features transform easily into an accessible form

8. make features that enable activation of page elements via input devices other than a pointing device (e.g. via keyboard, voice) available

9. provide sufficient information to determine the purpose of frames and how they relate to each other

10. make tables (not used for layout) have the necessary markup to be properly restructured or presented by accessible browsers and other user agents

11. indicate structure with structural elements and control presentation with presentation elements and style sheets

12. provide supplemental information needed to pronounce or interpret abbreviated or foreign text

13. build accessibility into elements that contain their own user interface

14. use interim accessibility solutions to assure that assistive technologies and older browsers will operate correctly

15. group controls, selections, and labels into semantic units

16. create good link phrases

17. provide mechanisms that facilitate navigation within your site

18. create a single downloadable file for documents that exist as a series of separate pages.

Methods for complying with the standards above may be found athttp://www.w3c.org.

To view Great Falls College MSU’s full policy on ADA and Accommodations, please follow this link: www.gfcmsu.edu/about/policies/PDF/400/401_4.pdf