The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleged in a June 27 lawsuit that Pearson Education, Inc., failed to provide equal access to training for employees with visual impairments
The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, said the educational publishing and services company violated the Americans with Disabilities Act when it used third-party vendors for training, payroll, benefits, performance and leave information that weren’t fully accessible to blind or visually impaired employees and couldn’t accommodate screen-reading software.
As a result, employees with visual impairments used their personal time to complete required training by asking a sighted person or manager to help them, EEOC said. Employees also said they disclosed sensitive information to third parties, lost unpaid leave time and incurred unexpected out-of-pocket expenses from insurance elections due to the lack of access.
“For example, during their employee onboarding process in 2018, Aggrieved Individual No. 1 could not independently elect their health insurance benefits, assign beneficiaries, or complete their IRS W-4 tax form through ADP, and had to receive assistance from Human Resources. Sometime in March 2019, Aggrieved Individual No. 1 discovered that the W-4 form had automatically elected zero tax withholding, which resulted in a $10,000 tax bill,” the lawsuit alleged.
The same worker — a senior quality assurance engineer for blindness technologies who was responsible for evaluating Pearson’s assessment and courseware products to ensure they were accessible by people with visual impairments — allegedly lost 44 hours of unused paid leave time “because they did not receive updates on their leave balance from management.”
The lawsuit seeks equal access and reasonable accommodations, such as technological fixes and third-party vendors with accessible portals, as well as damages.
The ADA is intended to protect employees and applicants with disabilities from discrimination and, as part of that, requires reasonable accommodations; furthermore employers should train managers on proper implementation, experts previously told HR Dive. Reasonable accommodations, for instance, can include making facilities accessible, restructuring jobs and providing policy exemptions.
When it comes to training, there are numerous accommodations employers can consider, according to the Job Accommodation Network, a service of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy. Training accommodations could include alternative formats, assistive technology, sign language interpreters, real-time captions, extended time, reduced distractions, verbal explanations and job coaches who can provide additional guidance.