LRCFT ACCESSIBILITY STATEMENT

Approved by LRCFT Executive Board, December 18th, 2024

The Los Rios College Federation of Teachers strongly supports accessibility for students and believes that all students who require accessible materials should be provided with them. The union also recognizes that many faculty, as part of their contractual service hours or through professional development, have taken on the task of educating themselves about accessibility and applying their new knowledge to some or all of the materials that they provide to their students. The importance of accessibility and the concerted efforts made by individual faculty to incorporate accessible materials, however, do not change the fact that making all materials accessible falls outside the scope of faculty’s contractual obligations under the 2023-2026 Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Accessibility is not the same as DSPS Accommodations. Accessibility is the generalized process of making materials accessible to any person with a disability who might view or use the materials; the District’s definition of making materials accessible is designing the material “to provide a person with a disability the opportunity to acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions, and enjoy the same services as a person without a disability in an equally effective and equally integrated manner, with substantially equivalent ease of use. A person with a disability must be able to obtain the information as fully, equally, and independently as a person without a disability.” (Los Rios Community College District Information & Communication Technology
Accessibility Program).

Accommodations, by contrast, are part of an individualized process in which specific students inform the institution regarding their disabilities and their needs, and the institution then ensures that the individual’s needs are properly accommodated. The District’s definition of an accommodation is “an alteration of environment, curriculum format, or equipment that allows an individual with a disability to gain access to content and/or complete assigned tasks” (Los Rios Community College District Information & Communication Technology Accessibility Program). At Los Rios, student accommodations are determined by the campus Disabled Student Programs and Services offices (DSPS). These services are required under ADA.

Faculty have a professional responsibility to collaborate with DSPS staff in order to meet the accommodations for individual students in both on-ground and online courses, as outlined in instructor notification letters provided by each college’s DSPS office. The general accessibility of all course materials, however, is not currently a classroom faculty responsibility under the terms of our collective bargaining agreement. Therefore, the general accessibility of course materials (e.g. video captions) may not be included as part of the performance review process and final evaluation of faculty.

Some of our members have asked, “If faculty are not contractually responsible for general accessibility compliance, then who will do the work?” LRCFT believes that when accessible materials are required by law, the District should permanently hire staff to do the technical work of making materials accessible. Accessibility work should be done without adding uncompensated workload to classroom faculty or infringing on classroom faculty’s ability to select instructionally appropriate materials.

The LRCFT remains steadfast in upholding our faculty contract and will update faculty on emerging accessibility issues. We hope you will stand with us in insisting that the District provide our students with the full accessibility support that they deserve.