The Blind Students Who Fought Their College for Equal Digital Access

Roy Payan pressed Tab through his college’s course portal and heard nothing useful. An unlabelled button. A PDF that read as a blank page. A registration flow that simply stopped. He was a blind student enrolled at the Los Angeles Community College District, and the barrier was not a locked door or a missing ramp. It was code.

Video: The Blind Students Who Fought Their College for Equal Digital Access

Portia Mason, also a blind LACCD student relying on a screen reader, encountered the same systems. The same silence. The same dead ends built into software the college had selected and deployed for its entire student population.

Together, Payan and Mason sued. What followed was a six-year case that ended with a jury verdict in May 2023, and a lesson that extends well beyond any college campus.

A Tab Key, a Screen Reader, and a Course Portal That Went Silent

Screen readers work by interpreting the underlying code of a page and announcing it aloud. When a developer labels a button correctly, the screen reader says “Submit form, button.” When they do not, it says “button,” or nothing at all.

For Roy Payan, navigating LACCD’s learning management system meant encountering exactly this kind of silence at critical moments. A button that existed visually but carried no programmatic label. A PDF course document the screen reader announced as a blank file because no one had tagged its structure. A multi-step registration sequence where the path forward simply disappeared, not because it was hidden, but because it had never been built with keyboard navigation in mind.

Portia Mason faced the same barriers in the same systems. These were not occasional glitches. They were structural failures baked into platforms students were required to use to complete their education.

Filed in 2017, Payan and Mason v. Los Angeles Community College District was not about a single broken page. It was about an institution that had selected and maintained digital systems that systematically excluded blind students from full participation in their own coursework.

What Made the College’s Digital Systems Inaccessible

Three categories of failure appeared repeatedly in the case. Each maps to a specific WCAG 2.1 AA criterion and each produces a distinct, predictable experience for a screen reader user.

These are not obscure edge-case criteria. They are foundational WCAG requirements that any accessibility audit surfaces within minutes. The failures existed not because the standards were unclear, but because no one had checked whether the systems met them.

The Verdict, and the 2025 Case That Proves It Was Not Isolated

In May 2023, a jury awarded Payan and Mason approximately $240,000. (This figure is reported as a public verdict; confirm via court record or primary news source before publication.) It was a rare jury verdict in a web accessibility case. Courts will apply WCAG 2.1 AA criteria to educational institutions, and plaintiffs will win when the failures are as concrete and documentable as these were.

The LACCD case might have looked like a one-off: an older system, a single district, a resolved problem. Then, in March 2025, the National Federation of the Blind filed National Federation of the Blind et al. v. West Virginia University, alleging that blind graduate students could not access course materials, field placement systems, and assistive technology support. (Present as publicly filed; confirm specific plaintiff details before publication.)

The pattern is not historical. According to UsableNet’s 2025 Year in Review, approximately 3,117 federal web accessibility lawsuits were filed in 2025, a 27% increase over 2024. Including state court filings, total cases exceeded 5,000.

The colleges change. The failures stay the same.

Can a College Be Sued for an Inaccessible Website?

Yes. Public colleges and universities are subject to ADA Title II, which applies to state and local government entities. If a public college’s digital systems, including its course portal, its LMS, and its registration system, deny equal access to a student with a disability, that is a viable Title II claim.

There is a second, parallel enforcement path that most people have not heard of: Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Section 504 applies to any institution that receives federal funding, which includes virtually every college in the United States, public or private. A student does not need to invoke the ADA at all. Section 504 alone provides grounds to sue over inaccessible digital systems.

Private colleges face ADA Title III claims, the same legal framework that applies to private businesses. The LACCD accessibility lawsuit involved a public institution, but private universities have been successfully sued under Title III.

One detail most compliance teams have missed: in April 2026, the federal government extended the ADA Title II web accessibility compliance deadlines by one year. The new deadlines are April 24, 2027 for public entities serving populations over 50,000, and April 26, 2028 for smaller entities, per the DOJ’s final rule. That extension has not slowed private lawsuits. If anything, private plaintiffs have become the primary enforcement mechanism. A pause in federal rulemaking does not pause litigation.

This Is Not Just a College Problem

Colleges are visible targets because their failures affect students with no alternative. You cannot get your degree from a different university just because this one’s portal will not load correctly in JAWS. The stakes are obvious, the documentation is clean, and the plaintiffs have a clear record of harm.

The technical failures that triggered the LACCD case are not unique to higher education. Unlabelled form fields, untagged PDFs, inaccessible video: these appear on retail sites, healthcare portals, and SaaS dashboards every day. The When Patients Couldn’t Book Vaccine Appointments Online story shows the same WCAG failures surfacing in healthcare booking systems, with DOJ settlements as the consequence.

The legal standard courts apply is identical regardless of industry. According to ADA.gov, ADA Title III covers private businesses and carries no government-mandated compliance deadline for web accessibility. Enforcement is lawsuit-driven, and courts consistently apply WCAG 2.1 AA as the de facto standard. If your website cannot be navigated by a screen reader, the exposure is the same whether you run a college portal or an e-commerce checkout.

A free website accessibility checker will surface unlabelled buttons, missing alt text, and other WCAG 2.1 AA failures within minutes. Run one now to see whether the failure types from the LACCD case exist in your own code.

What to Check Before Your Organisation Is Named

The failures that triggered the LACCD lawsuit were not sophisticated. They were basic. That means they are fixable, and detectable before a complaint is filed.

Work through this list:

• Unlabelled form fields and buttons. Every interactive element needs a programmatic label. Tab through your most-used forms and note what a screen reader would announce at each step.
• Untagged PDFs. Any PDF you publish, whether a brochure, a contract, course materials, or a report, needs to be tagged with proper heading and reading order structure. A blank-page result in a screen reader is a 1.3.1 failure.
• Video without captions or audio description. Any video carrying informational content needs accurate captions. Auto-generated captions frequently contain errors that make them legally insufficient.
• Keyboard navigation dead ends. Users who cannot use a mouse must be able to complete every critical action, including registration, checkout, and account management, using only a keyboard. Test it manually.
• Images without alt text. Every non-decorative image needs a text alternative that conveys the same information.

A one-time scan is a starting point, not a programme. Continuous Accessibility Monitoring and Site-Wide Scanning catches regressions introduced by content updates and code deployments before they accumulate into a documented pattern of harm. Accessibility Training for Designers and Developers: A Practical Team Guide addresses the other half of the equation: tools catch failures, training prevents them from being introduced in the first place.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much can a college accessibility lawsuit cost?

Outcomes vary significantly. The LACCD jury verdict was approximately $240,000 for two plaintiffs. Settlements in higher education accessibility cases have ranged from $100,000 to over $8 million depending on how many students were affected, how systemic the failures were, and whether the institution was required to fund district-wide remediation. A case involving multiple plaintiffs and systemic failure will cost more than a single-plaintiff claim over a specific page.

Does the ADA apply to private colleges and universities?

Yes. Private colleges face ADA Title III claims, the same legal framework applied to private businesses. Public colleges face ADA Title II and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Both pathways have produced successful lawsuits. Courts ask a consistent question: did the institution’s digital systems deny a person with a disability equal access to the services the institution provides? If the answer is yes, the legal basis exists regardless of whether the institution is public or private.

This article is educational and is not legal advice. If your organisation is facing an accessibility complaint or lawsuit, consult a qualified attorney.