Public universities though are required to provide programmatic access
under 508 to educational and administrative resources.  So if web or
internet resources are part of an educational experience the web resources
need to be accessible or provided in an alternative format that are
accessible.  The potential standards a court of law would use to determine
if the web resources were accessible would be either the W3C Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines [1] or the Section 508 rules[2].  Since these
would be considered publicly available web accessibility requirements that
people could use to create web resources, even though current law does not
explicitly require their use for educational institutions.  It would be up
to the lawyers to argue which should apply in a particular situation, until
more explicit law is enacted.  You may also try contacting Cynthia Waddell
[3] a well know disability and information technology lawyer and advocate.

Jon

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/
[2] http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/508standards.htm
[3] http://www.icdri.org/cynthia_waddell.htm

At 09:50 AM 11/28/2001 -0800, Tom Horn wrote:
> > Hi,
> >     Can some one guide me to the specific part of section 508 and its
> > applicability to distance education by community colleges and
>Universities.
>
>These are Federal Section 508 guidelines. Community colleges and
>universities
>are not mandated to follow the guidelines.
>
>Tom Horn

Jon Gunderson, Ph.D., ATP
Coordinator of Assistive Communication and Information Technology
Division of Rehabilitation - Education Services
MC-574
College of Applied Life Studies
University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign
1207 S. Oak Street, Champaign, IL  61820

Voice: (217) 244-5870
Fax: (217) 333-0248

E-mail: [log in to unmask]

WWW: http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~jongund
WWW: http://www.w3.org/wai/ua