Three California community college districts must comply with state mandates requiring them to make all class materials available online in formats that are accessible for students with disabilities, following a state audit that determined that some of the colleges’ current information technology efforts didn’t measure up.
The report, released Dec. 5, examined information technology at a small sampling of college districts and colleges in different areas of the state.
The California State Auditor evaluated the technology accessibility efforts at Cerritos Community College in Southern California, Foothill-De Anza Community College District in the Bay Area and Los Rios Community College District in the Sacramento area. The audit also included one individual college within each of the multicollege districts — De Anza College in Foothill-De Anza, and American River College in Los Rios.
The audit was conducted to identify whether the colleges’ websites fully met state and federal accessibility guidelines. The audit also reviewed the processes the groups have in place for upgrading and replacing their information technology equipment.
The districts and colleges must submit status reports showing their progress toward the goals outlined in the audit 60 days after the audit was issued, again at six months and again at one year, said Margarita Fernandez, spokeswoman for the California State Auditor. The state Legislature would provide further assessment of where the groups stand in meeting the outlined goals, she said.
According to the report, none of the college districts that the audit examined adequately monitored how long their officials took to respond to requests from students with disabilities for course materials in accessible media formats.
In its review of data for December 2015 through January 2017, the state found that American River College in the Los Rios district exceeded its time-frame goal in 5 percent of the requests received during that time period. Delays ranged from one day to 69 days, averaging 19 days beyond the college’s two-week goal.
“When students do not have equal access to instructional materials and their requests for an alternate format are not addressed promptly, they do not have equal educational opportunities,” the report said.
American River and De Anza colleges also do not have adequate processes in place to ensure that their websites are accessible to students with disabilities, according to the report.
However, Los Rios Community College District spokesman Gabe Ross said the district has “checks and balances in place to make sure the content is accessible.” For example, he said, while the audit noted that 5 percent of people were not responded to in a time frame that was deemed “consistent with our standard,” the remaining 95 percent were appropriately handled.
“Being 95 percent successful in that responsiveness is actually a pretty good place to start from. We are looking forward to ways to improve upon them,” he said.
The institutions included in the audit face several challenges in their efforts to comply with the information technology mandates.
An official from American River College noted that instructors sometimes use materials or free software without informing the college administrators, preventing the accessibility compliance officer from knowing whether the software or materials meet the appropriate accessibility standard, the report said.
Several districts are working to develop solutions to the technology accessibility issues, the audit found.
Ross said the Los Rios district is now “in the process of reviewing that audit report and looking at ways it can help us improve our practices. We are grateful to have an external lens on things we can do better.”
For example, Ross said, “There were some things that were under way even before the auditors came to our door,” including convening an accessibility task force to examine “access issues and ways to close any gaps.”
Ross said the district is also about to launch a redesign of the websites for the district and two of its colleges next year. The redesigned websites will meet and exceed all current accessibility standards, Ross said. An RFP for the website redesign had been published but then canceled, Ross said, because there was only one vendor submission.
“At the same time,” he noted, “it was brought to our attention that the district had consulting hours available through an existing agreement with the technology consulting group CampusWorks. Because CampusWorks has expertise in this area, we decided to utilize these existing consultant hours and cancel the RFP.”
The California State Auditor also required that by September 2018, the Office of the Chancellor of the California Community Colleges should provide guidance to the colleges on establishing policies and procedures to monitor the accessibility of their websites and provide guidance on best practices for colleges to use in preventing their websites from containing inaccessible information.
