Office of Civil Rights Receives Record Number of Special Education Complaints

The United States Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Education enforces civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, national origin, sex, disability and age.  A new OCR report for the period 2009-2010 states that from 2009 to 2011, the agency received more complaints about disability issues than in any previous three-year period.  Of the nearly 11,700 complaints concerning disability issues, almost 4,700 involved the rights of children to receive a free and appropriate public education (FAPE).  The remaining 7,000 disability-related complaints concerned issues including school district violations of Child Find, denial of access to academic programs and extracurricular activities, access to assistive technology, denial of academic adjustments, and harassment and bullying.

The data used in the report covered 85% of U.S. public schools.  The data for 2011-2013 will include every public school in the nation.  Matters described in the OCR report include:

·         A school district that required parents to get medical documentation, at their own expense, supporting the existence of disabilities for their children. The district also required parents to show that their children were being discriminated against before it would conduct an evaluation for disabilities.

·         A charter school that failed to properly evaluate whether a 6th grade transfer student with a severe, potentially life-threatening peanut allergy to determine if she had a disability.

·         A school district that had not fully implemented an IEP for a child with a mood disorder.

·        Investigation of whether children who ride school buses specifically for children with disabilities receive less instructional time than children who do not have disabilities.

·         Data collected showing that students with disabilities are twice as likely to be suspended out of school in comparison to their peers without disabilities.

·         Cases involving the bullying and harassment of students with disabilities.

·         School denial of access to academic programs and extracurricular activities to students with disabilities.

The entire report is available at:  http://www2.ed.gov/documents/news/section-504.pdf

Kudos for Bookshare® Downloadable Audio and Braille Books for Students with Visual Impairments and Dyslexia

Through an award from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), Bookshare offers free memberships to U.S. schools and qualifying U.S. students.

Bookshare® is an online library of digital books for people with print disabilities. It operates under an exception to U.S. copyright law which allows copyrighted digital books to be made available to people with qualifying disabilities. In addition, many publishers and authors have volunteered to provide Bookshare with access to their works. By requiring individuals to register as Members and provide a Proof of Disability, Bookshare ensures that only qualified individuals use the service.

Bookshare serves:
1. People with Visual Impairments: Members with visual impairments can listen to books with using a text-to-speech synthesized voice, read books in Braille, or access the material in large print. Members with low vision can read books in an enlarged font using either a screen magnifier or by opening the book in a software program that supports increased font size, color, contrast, etc.

2. People with Physical Disabilities: Members can read books on a computer or a variety of portable devices, either visually and with text-to-speech as desired. Bookshare books are as easy or easier to access than books on tape, and the Bookshare program is switch accessible.

3. People with Learning Disabilities: Members with severe dyslexia typically benefit from access to the full text of books in digital format, for multi-modal reading with both visual and audio (through synthetic text to speech). Many great software programs exist that provide a range of reading support specifically designed for individuals with learning disabilities, including highlighting of text as it is read aloud, changing margin, word, paragraph and line spacing, and setting custom background and print colors.

Bookshare books are available in the following accessible digital formats from the Bookshare website:

DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System)-a talking-book file format

DAISY books from Bookshare are DAISY 3 text files that work with screen readers, self-voicing synthetic-voice DAISY players, portable self-voicing DAISY players, and scan-and-read software such as Kurzweil K1000 and K3000, WYNN, and OpenBook.

BRF (Braille Refreshable Format)-digital Braille for use with Braille embossers and refreshable Braille devices.

Bookshare Members download books, textbooks and newspapers in a compressed, encrypted file. They then read the material using assistive technology, typically software that reads the book aloud (text-to-speech), Daisy audio file readers and or devices that display the text of the book on a computer screen, or Braille access devices, such as refreshable Braille displays.