[Job-Discussions] Handling inaccessible training crse materials

[Andrews, David B (DEED)]

I think you want to request access to the training as a reasonable accommodation. You can request anything, or make suggestions, and ultimately the employer decides on what they will provide. 

If it were me I would suggest possible approaches, Teams could be one, Webex has gotten better if you haven't tried it lately, you could ask for a human to assist you with the inaccessible parts. 

Ultimately if they are going to require the training, they need to make it possible for you to do it.

Dave



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From: Job-Discussions <job-discussions-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Kelsey Nicolay via Job-Discussions
Sent: Thursday, June 27, 2024 6:23 AM
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Cc: Kelsey Nicolay <piano.girl0299 at gmail.com>
Subject: [Job-Discussions] Handling inaccessible training crse materials

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Hello,
My employer requires that we complete 30 hours of training annually through their school of business. The content is developed by a third party vendor. Unfortunately, the courses are completely inaccessible with lots of graphics and images. I've tried JAWS OCR, but it won't read it due to the way it is formatted. The live virtual sessions aren't very accessible either because they use WebEx which is not very accessible with JAWS either. We can't use our cell phones either to join the course; the WebEx app for iOS still isn't great, but it's better than the program for the computer. My employer has tried to work with the content creator to make their material accessible, but so far no progress has been m at de. My manager has tried multiple times to request that I be exempt from the training requirement due to the inaccessibi£ity of the courses, but upper management is saying that I still have to do the training. they can't accept any training completed outside of the company; it has to be either acourse through their school of business or an event sponsored by the company. However, given the inaccessibility of their courses, would it be a rasonable accommodation to request that I be given credit for educ at tional events outside the company that are relevant to my job duties or would it be a reasonable accommodation to ask that any live virtual session take place via Teams instead of WebEx or that I be allowed to use Teams or join by conference call?
Sent from Kelsey Nicolay's iPhone
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