From my friend and colleague Wendy Harbour:
An interesting situation is evolving in California. Just to be clear, colleges are NOT able to claim financial hardship in providing disability services – meaning they can NEVER say services are too expensive, or cut services for financial reasons. Even if a disability services office can’t afford it, the college can. I like to say that campuses would have to be cutting out the athletics department before they could cut disability services for financial reasons.
Now the situation may be changing in California because many campuses are unable to meet their budgets for anything (including athletics). But it’s complicated because the campuses have been relying on state funding to support disability services, instead of seeing it as part of the cost of doing business. There was some talk at the 2012 national AHEAD conference about whether some California campuses may actually be able to claim hardship, but I am doubtful. There have been no legal challenges one way or another, as far as I know.
Here’s one campus where this is all playing out – thought I would pass this along because it may be a sign of things to come, but also because they turned to a charity model, fundraising to keep services. I hate seeing things go backward….
Planet of the Blind 